I have never been very good at holding conversations with people or approaching people to talk.
Don't worry, there are plenty of people like this in Linguistics graduate programs ;)
Try to talk to professors more about the readings you're doing. If you have questions about the reading, or if you're interested in learning more about the subject the reading discusses, email the professor.
If there's a topic you don't quite get, or a theory that doesn't sit right with you - talk to them about it. Saying "I get that author X is saying blah, but I can't help but wonder - has she considered this other issue?" Things like that light up my day as a teacher. When a student says to me that the reading has made them think about something, or make them see something in another way...I remember that student for a long time. It shows they're taking an interest and they're expressing that interest to me.
Thanks much! I've been trying to do that more often; lately I've been trying to get into the habit of asking both professors and TAs about subjects I'm curious about. Once I actually received a whole paper in response. That was really cool.
Do you teach linguistics? What sorts of things do you specialize in?
I teach discourse analysis, mainly of political rhetoric, and I also teach sociolinguistics stuff related to language standardization and its applications in education.
I'm a functionalist and my area of specialisation is discourse analysis, and also Native American language revitalization :)
Oh, neat! Actually, one of the professors I seem to get along rather well with specializes in American Indian languages and is known for her field work (maybe you can guess who she is based on that description; I dunno ;]). I find discourse analysis quite interesting, although I don't know nearly as much as I'd like to about it. In fact, I'm not even sure if anybody in the linguistics department here works on it...although it seems like something that would be situated in a different field of study, so I guess that makes sense.
Don't worry, there are plenty of people like this in Linguistics graduate programs ;)
Try to talk to professors more about the readings you're doing. If you have questions about the reading, or if you're interested in learning more about the subject the reading discusses, email the professor.
If there's a topic you don't quite get, or a theory that doesn't sit right with you - talk to them about it. Saying "I get that author X is saying blah, but I can't help but wonder - has she considered this other issue?" Things like that light up my day as a teacher. When a student says to me that the reading has made them think about something, or make them see something in another way...I remember that student for a long time. It shows they're taking an interest and they're expressing that interest to me.
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Do you teach linguistics? What sorts of things do you specialize in?
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I'm a functionalist and my area of specialisation is discourse analysis, and also Native American language revitalization :)
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Awesome avatar, by the way.
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I think disc. analysis is more common in functionalist departments, and there are only a handful of those.
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