CAREER OPPORTUNITIES FOR LINGUISTICS MAJORS

The Linguistics major is good preparation for a number of career paths because it develops problem-solving, the ability to find patterns in complicated data, and writing and argumentation skills. These are abilities that can be emphasized when applying for many different kinds of jobs. Law and journalism schools and other professional schools are becoming more and more aware that students with a linguistics degree have strengths in these important areas. (University Career Services has many resources for helping students match their skills and interests to careers in a wide range of fields.)

US citizens with a background in linguistics may also find jobs with US government agencies.

Some students choose to continue specializing in linguistics teaching or research. For this, they will typically need to obtain a graduate degree in linguistics.

Other possible careers for linguistics majors that have a close connection to language and linguistics include language teaching, speech pathology/speech and hearing science, language and information technologies (including speech synthesis and recognition, text-content analysis, and machine translation), information and library science, or editing and publishing. Careers in these areas may also require a graduate degree.

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EXTERNAL LINKS FOR MORE INFORMATION

General job information for linguists

• "Jobs for linguists"
  By Naomi Nagy, University of New Hampshire
• Linguistic Enterprises
  Information about non-academic jobs for linguists
• Job information from the LINGUIST LIST
• Article about planning for the graduate school application process
  From the Daily Tar Heel

Theoretical linguistics

• "(Linguistics) Graduate school: Is it for me?" (PDF)
  By Albert Bickford and Steve Marlett, University of North Dakota and Summer Institute of Linguistics, Mexico
• The graduate program in Linguistics at UNC-CH
• The LINGUIST List's online directory of linguistics degree programs

Applied linguistics / Language teaching

• American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL)
• American Association for Applied Linguistics
  Follow link to "Graduate Programs" on side menu
• Center for Applied Linguistics

Speech & hearing science

• Information about the UNC-CH Linguistics major for pre-Speech & Hearing Science students
• The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA)
• ASHA's Online Guide to Graduate Programs in audiology and speech-language pathology
• The Division of Speech and Hearing Sciences at UNC-CH

Information & library science

• The School of Information and Library Science at UNC-CH

Computational linguistics

• "While you're still in school: Consider Computational Linguistics" [11/2007: broken link?]
  By Catherine N. Ball, Georgetown U.
• The Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL)