33.2412, Review: Applied Linguistics: Trester (2022)
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LINGUIST List: Vol-33-2412. Wed Aug 03 2022. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.
Subject: 33.2412, Review: Applied Linguistics: Trester (2022)
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Date: Wed, 03 Aug 2022 17:56:02
From: Jenni Räikkönen [jenni.raikkonen at tuni.fi]
Subject: Employing Linguistics
Discuss this message:
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/reviews/get-review.cfm?subid=36814197
Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/33/33-1002.html
AUTHOR: Anna Marie Trester
TITLE: Employing Linguistics
SUBTITLE: Thinking and Talking About Careers for Linguists
PUBLISHER: Bloomsbury Publishing (formerly The Continuum International Publishing Group)
YEAR: 2022
REVIEWER: Jenni Maria Räikkönen, Tampere University
SUMMARY
If you are scanning through job advertisements for a linguist in the hope that
you might find something interesting for you, you might be discouraged by what
you find. If one’s dream does not involve staying in academia after graduating
with an MA or a PhD in linguistics, the alternative is usually to find a job
either as a teacher or as a translator. However, as we can learn from the book
“Employing Linguistics: Thinking and Talking about Careers for Linguists” by
Anna Marie Trester (who is also the author of “Bringing Linguistics to Work”,
2017), there actually are more opportunities for us. We just need to expand
our horizons to find them.
The book is built around career stories of people that are either trained as
linguists or work like linguists. There are almost 40 stories from people
working in different sectors (plus a few stories from the author herself), and
the stories focus on what these people are doing now and how they employ their
linguistic ways of thinking in their day-to-day work. At the end of each
chapter, there is a “catalyst” for the reader, in which the author encourages
the readers to think about their own career stories from different angles.
In the introduction to the book, the author talks about the metaphor that she
used as the base for the book: charting the stars. Through this metaphor, she
urges the readers to start thinking about their own career paths as stars that
eventually form a constellation. At times we can only see one star here and
another there, and there are even times when we can see no stars at all. But
the stars are there, and little by little, by connecting the bright spots, we
can start seeing the complete picture – the constellation.
The author says that the book is for anyone who is interested in a linguistic
approach to a career, and she especially targets the book for students who
want to know what their future prospects might be and professors who want to
help their students (or themselves) in finding their place in the world. The
author adds that the book might also be useful for those who wonder what
linguistic thinking has to offer for work in different sectors.
In Chapter 1, “Reckoning your own Intentions”, the author shares stories from
three linguists in their career-defining moments. In this chapter, the author
wants to emphasize that once we have been trained in seeing things through
linguistic lenses, we work like linguists, even if we are not working as
linguists. The stories come from Charlotte Linde, whose career-defining moment
was saying “yes” when she was offered a job at NASA, where she would focus on
communication at the cockpit; Samantha Beaver, who had to use her linguistic
skills when she had to think about how to present her business idea to attract
clients, and how she would introduce herself, a linguist, when only a handful
of people know what linguists do; and finally, Anne Charity Hudley, who has
been involved in projects focusing on fostering diversity in linguistic
sciences and encouraging speaking up for racial justice.
In Chapter 2, “BRIGHTEN while you Work”, the author introduces the acronym
BRIGHTEN that stands for Business, Research, Innovation, Government,
Healthcare (Communication), Technology, Education and Nonprofit World. These
are the major sectors in which the ten people whose stories are shared in this
chapter – all of whom are the author’s former students – work. The stories
focus on where they work, how they have use their linguistic training in their
work, and how they and their employer have benefitted from their training.
Chapter 3, “How Linguists BRIGHTEN”, focuses on stories from four linguists
working in the research sector, mostly as user researchers. However, the
chapter begins with a look at a professional portfolio of a user researcher
and then introduces the method the author calls “D.I.E”, short for Describe,
Interpret and Evaluate. This method, according to the author, helps us better
understand our own meaning-making processes, as we should first describe what
we see, then make an interpretation of it and only after that evaluate the
situation. The problem is that we often jump over the description phase and go
straight to interpretation or even evaluation, in which case we will not
properly understand why things or people work the way they do.
In Chapter 4, “Decide to BRIGHTEN Here and Now”, there are stories from people
who are involved in social justice work, and they talk about how linguistics
is a factor in their day-to-day work. The author urges the readers to think
about what we could do as linguists (or working like linguists) that would
matter to us and make a difference. She says that helping others is always a
good place to start, and we should think about how linguistics could help us
in making the world a better place.
Chapter 5, “BRIGHTEN around the World”, includes stories from linguists
working in different sectors (second language testing, e-commerce,
entrepreneurship, activism and advocacy). The connecting factor is that they
have all worked outside the United States.
In Chapter 6, “Navigating your Career with WHY”, the stories focus on the
question of WHY people do what they do the way they do. There are stories from
six people (plus one from the author) working in different sectors, and they
talk about why they have decided to work in that specific field and why they
think knowledge of linguistics is useful in their workplace.
In the Conclusion, the author goes back to some of the stories and reflects on
how the stories have affected the way she thinks about her own career. There
is also one remaining story from Jeremy Rud, and that story further emphasizes
the idea that language is an important factor everywhere, and that the
linguistic skill set is useful in many sectors. At the end of the conclusion,
the author brings up questions to which I, too, have wanted to hear answers:
in a job interview, should I mention that I have a PhD or not? Should I say
that I am a linguist? The author shares her advice: try calling yourself a
linguist or try not doing so and “listen to the response”. We cannot escape
the fact that some people do have misconceptions about what linguists do and
are capable of, and they may also have their own views about people that have
a PhD. It is a cold fact that we cannot change people’s attitudes and
preconceptions all at once, but we can start, if we want to. Recognize that
you have choices in this situation.
EVALUATION
Anna Marie Tester has written the book that many linguists have been waiting
for: the one that explains what we can do and what opportunities there are for
people who are trained as linguists. We might at times be a bit skeptical
about our own usefulness outside academia, but as the stories in this book
show, linguists have acquired skills that are wanted and needed in many
sectors and in many different types of workplaces. This gives hope for many
linguists struggling to find their place in the world and helps the readers to
get the mindset that there are plenty of opportunities. The tone of the book
is positive, encouraging and optimistic, and for that reason, the book is a
valuable resource.
The language, as is pointed out by the author herself in the Conclusion, is
very informal. This gave the book a certain flow and made it very easy to
read. Furthermore, the stories that the author has chosen, and the way she has
written them, suck the reader in and made it difficult to stop reading.
Even though I understand that the book is not meant as a career coach, per se,
but more as an inspiration, I expected there to be more discussion on how to
land a job and more practical tips on how to convince employers of the varied
skills that linguists have. Some stories touch upon that topic, but only very
briefly. Also, the career paths described in the stories sound very smooth and
easy (even though I am sure they have been anything but). For the readers that
have struggled to find a job and have turned to this book for advice, I would
have wanted there to be more tips on how to survive setbacks and even
failures. As many of us know, job hunting is more than just finding one’s
passion.
Furthermore, as the author herself points out, almost all the people whose
stories are shared in the book work in the US. Even though, Chapter 5
exclusively focuses on people that have worked internationally, perhaps more
stories from people working in other countries – or at least discussion on how
other countries might differ from the US in this regard – would have been
welcome.
For me, the best thing about the book was the inspiration that I got from the
stories. I often found myself googling the job titles mentioned in the book,
many of which were completely new to me or at least I had not realized that
linguistic training could be useful in those contexts. Finding more
information about them gave me many eureka moments: there actually are people
that do this, and I could be one of them. So, again another job title to add
to my list of opportunities to explore further when the time comes!
While reading the book, it became clear why the author had chosen “Employing
linguistics” as the title instead of “Employing linguists”; the main point in
the book is that even though we are not working as linguists, we can work like
linguists, employing linguistic ways of thinking in our work. And this, as the
stories of the book show, can have many benefits to the employer as well to
society at large.
The book does what it is intended for: it helps the readers in finding their
“bright spots”, i.e., to have a clearer picture of what they are interested
in, and eventually form a constellation that guides them towards their dream
job. The varied stories certainly have something for every reader, and after
reading them, the readers probably start seeing more opportunities and more
places in which they could make use of their knowledge of linguistics.
REFERENCES
Trester, Anna Marie. 2017. Bringing Linguistics to Work: A Story Listening,
Story Finding, and Story Telling Approach to Your Career. Lulu Publishing
Services.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Jenni Räikkönen, MA, is a doctoral researcher at the Faculty of Information
Technology and Communication Sciences, Tampere University, Finland. Her
research interests include critical discourse analysis and corpus linguistics.
Her research has mainly focused on analyzing political and media discourses.
She writes a blog (in Finnish) targeted at other early-career researchers,
sharing tips on how to survive in the academic world.
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