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<p class="MsoNormal">My experience is a bit different from Dan’s
and I hold with much of what Sebastian is saying. As I see it,
many (not very many, it is true) typologists have had
astonishingly good job opportunities in recent years (not all of
them permanent, it is true, but a considerable number of
typologists have got tenure in recent years). By this I
certainly do not claim that things are ideal in our field.
However, I do not think that things have gone all bad in
typology all of a sudden. It is probably not worse now than a
decade or two decades ago. When I started my Ph.D. in Stockholm
in 1997 I was certainly not sure that I was going to be a
linguist all my life. I thought Stockholm would be a good place
so I would at least learn Swedish if nothing else was resulting
from all this in the long run. As a matter of fact, in
comparison to other linguists, typologists seem to have much
better chances on the academic job market at least in Europe
than linguists pursuing other approaches. (And compare this,
e.g., to the art business: all the musicians, dancers and
singers without permanent jobs!) A major issue as elsewhere in
academia (and art) is mobility. In academia you cannot expect to
get a job where you live at the moment and where your family is
at the moment (there are country differences here, there are
some residues where this still seems to be possible). There are
hundreds of good things about academia, but in this respect some
other professions have some advantages. Many talented
linguistics students of my acquaintance who have left the field
more or less against their intentions have not been willing or
did not have the possibility to look for jobs abroad (there is
perhaps also a gender bias in this in some countries). (By this
I do not imply that you always can get a job if you are willing
to go somewhere else.) Interestingly, a researcher’s
willingness/possibilities to go somewhere else for doing
fieldwork seems not to correlate much with somebody’s
willingness/possibilities to go somewhere else for life. Any
time a student tells me s/he thinks of the possibility of a
career as a researcher I tell them that it is important for them
to know that they cannot expect to get jobs where they are just
now or where their family is. Otherwise I will certainly not
tell promising students not to try to opt for research if they
really want to try this. And yes, many people’s joy of doing
what they do fades as years go by. Again, I think typology is
not particularly bad off in this respect.<o:p></o:p></p>
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<br>
Though I don't have statistical data, I (intuitively) disagree with
Bernhard's point. I believe the ratio between available jobs for
linguists inside their fields per world and available linguists per
world is so low that even mentioning the minority (?) of those who
are keen to stay where they are is probably pointless. <br>
<br>
As to David's argument: very optimistic, but can you really imagine
a world where the world outside linguistics will ever get interested
in linguists? Take e.g. machine translation: firms busy inside this
field rarely employ linguists (mostly not even computer linguists),
they take computer specialists doing statistics and the like (the
firms I have heard about at least, again I lack statistical data).<br>
<br>
Regards,<br>
<br>
Johannes<br>
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