Sociophonetics + Nordic Linguistics?

[shortica]

Does anyone know of any schools that do work in Nordic linguistics? I'm particularly interested in Norwegian from a sociolinguistics/phonetic and historical linguistics perspective. Otherwise, are there schools with strong sociophonetic research?

I'm Canadian, so I'm planning on applying for a PhD program at two schools in Canada and then two international places. (Also, I don't plan on taking the GRE, so that influences my options.)

Any advice would be helpful! 

[historicallinguist]

Europe has a quite a lot of philological programs. Check out programs in the U.K.

[cotterw]

I'm not totally sure about what they work on but the University of Oslo might be a good option? It's at least worth looking into. 

[historicallinguist]

10 hours ago, cotterw said:

 

I'm not totally sure about what they work on but the University of Oslo might be a good option? It's at least worth looking into. 

 

One point to add. I feel that the very notion of Nodic linguistics defeats the definition of linguistics. We do not talk about something like "Nodic Chemistry", Nodic quantum physics", etc. But isn't strange to say Nordic linguistics, if linguistics is truly a science? 

Maybe a better term would be Nordic languages, but surely not Nordic linguistics. I don't know. I am not a specialist of philosophy of linguistics. But it looks really odd to me, whenever someone says English linguistics, French linguistics, etc. It looks like whenever we say these things, we actually mean descriptive grammars of English/French, but not mean theories of grammar, which are the real "linguistics" stuffs (e.g. phonology, syntax, and semantics).

Anyways, I would also suggest the poster to look at comparative philology programs. Probably some European universities may have some Nordic philology programs out there. 

 

 

 

 

 

[Vowel_Harmonizer]

On 12/27/2015 at 11:19 PM, historicallinguist said:

One point to add. I feel that the very notion of Nodic linguistics defeats the definition of linguistics. We do not talk about something like "Nodic Chemistry", Nodic quantum physics", etc. But isn't strange to say Nordic linguistics, if linguistics is truly a science? 

Maybe a better term would be Nordic languages, but surely not Nordic linguistics. I don't know. I am not a specialist of philosophy of linguistics. But it looks really odd to me, whenever someone says English linguistics, French linguistics, etc. It looks like whenever we say these things, we actually mean descriptive grammars of English/French, but not mean theories of grammar, which are the real "linguistics" stuffs (e.g. phonology, syntax, and semantics).

Anyways, I would also suggest the poster to look at comparative philology programs. Probably some European universities may have some Nordic philology programs out there. 

 

 

 

 

 

Linguistics deals with the study of natural language, and since natural languages are necessarily tied to the cultures of the people, I don't see anything controversial about having a particular language or group of languages as an empirical focus. Linguistics is not Chemistry, and it is not Physics. Biology is probably a better analogy, if you want a parallel discipline? One can be a primatologist, a geneticist, an ornithologist, and so on, and still be considered a biologist. As for the notion of Linguistics as a purely theoretical science, focused only on competence and never performance, that seems a bit ideological. Theoretical phenomena need to be verified in crosslinguistic studies, and linguists focused on particular languages help contribute that data.

Edit: Wow, I just noticed how old the OP post is! As for advice, I would strongly advise against philology programs, at least as I understand them to be modeled as literature programs, since OP is looking for sociophonetics research. I don't think a philology program would do the type of quantitative work that would satisfy a sociophonetician.

As for actual program suggestions, I can only go based on reputation since this is not my particular interest, but hopefully someone more knowledgeable can chime in. Scandinavian programs you might find interesting would be those at the University of Tromsø and Lund University. Both seem like strong centers of research with a focus on Scandinavian languages. While Tromsø seems like it's primarily focused on syntax, I think they have a few typologists, who might also do some sociophonetics. Lund is probably a better bet for that, though, and they seem like a generally strong department.

 

Edited January 7, 2016 by Vowel_Harmonizer
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