HELLO WORLD
Hi, my name is Amy Rose Deal. I'm a professor of linguistics. One part of my job is linguistics: figuring about THINGS about LANGUAGES.1 The other part of my job is professoring: teaching, mentoring, reviewing, journal editing, contributing to the functioning of the half modern, half medieval institution that is the university today. Both parts of the job come with interesting intellectual challenges. I'm starting this blog2 primarily to write about the professoring part of the job. I plan to post answers to questions I am often asked by students, perspectives on questions facing junior linguists, basically a lot of well-intentioned unsolicited advice suitable for shouting into the void of the open internet...
CONSIDER THE SOURCE
Ok yeah so this is the sort of awkward part where I tell you what business I have weighing in on any of this, and where I am coming from in saying what I say here, in case you want to know :)
I'm a full professor of linguistics at UC Berkeley. I have held tenure-track positions in linguistics at three universities: (in reverse chronological order) UC Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz, and Harvard. I have published a book and a range of articles in syntax and semantics, with forays into morphology and language documentation. I have taught linguistics since 2009, have served on graduate admissions committees at three institutions, and have mentored graduate students through all stages of their graduate careers & strategizing for what comes next. I have applied for professor jobs in linguistics and evaluated applicants for professor jobs in linguistics. I have served as a journal editor in various ways—as an editor in chief, an associate editor, and as a founding co-editor of a new journal. I have reviewed many many many journal papers and conference abstracts. I have met with graduate students and sometimes undergraduates at linguistics departments across the US, discussing their work and basically all of the professoring stuff listed above.
Other things about me: I'm a 40-something white American woman. Millennial humor WILL happen, there is nothing I can do about it, sorry. I am a parent. I am a cat person. I am a UU. I love cooking and eating food. I like flowers and other things with radial symmetry. I have caught/cot merger and positive polarity anymore. I try to avoid despair.
Just in case this doesn't go without saying: what I say here is my own opinion and shouldn't be taken to represent anyone else's view.
KNOWN UNKNOWNS
There are a lot of things I don't know, some of which I know I don't know.3 A couple of salient dimensions:
There is substantial variation in the ways that universities work around the world. The system I know is the US system, and I will limit myself to giving advice about that system.
Like anyone doing scholarship of any kind, my work is specialized. The primary areas in which I work are syntax and semantics. Also, just as for everyone else, my work is part of specific larger intellectual traditions. The traditions that I work in are generative grammar and formal semantics. I don't speak for the field of linguistics overall—no one does. It is possible that parts of the fields which are more intellectually distant from my areas of expertise would be different in some important way from the parts I know. I will tell you if I think my advice is limited only to those in certain subfields/frameworks/traditions, but it is very possible that this might be true in more cases than I know.
Obviously, internet reader, I don't know the specifics of your personal situation, and of course there may be details there that render my advice inapplicable or even counterproductive. (I hope not counterproductive! But yeah. Find a person to talk to who does know your actual situation. Maybe the inapplicability of what you read here will give you a jumping-off point for chatting with them.)
TALK TO ME
I welcome your thoughts on / reactions to what I've written here; I'm also eager to hear what you might like me to write about in the future. You can comment, obviously. Also feel free to email me; for blog stuff please use [email protected] . You can find me on social media but I'll admit that I do not spend very much time on social media.
1 "Advancing scientific understanding of how languages work" -- is that better?
2 Technically this is both a blog and a newsletter—you can click “subscribe” if you want to be notified when I post something new. (This is the only thing that “subscribe” means.)