<p>I'm a high school junior and I know I have quite a few years before I even have to declare a major, but I'm just curious. I'm really into looking at patterns in languages and I absolutely love Spanish.<br>
I'm thinking of perhaps a minor in sociology, too.
I've heard of something called a sociolinguist, but I'm just curious what the real world jobs in this field are like. </p>
<p>And what colleges would be best for this? I'd love to go somewhere in Boston and I'm currently looking into BC.</p>
<p>There have been several threads like your own in the past that have answers on them. I'd also like to add that I posted a very similar thread about a year ago. :D</p>
<p>I know that UPenn (Labov) and Georgetown are the best for sociolinguistics. Other notable schools for linguistics (in one field or another) are MIT, UChicago, Brown, Cornell, UCLA, Ohio State, UMass Amherst, and I think maybe Yale(?).</p>
<p>If you're interested in BC, Georgetown might be a very good school for you. I know lots of kids apply to both BC and Georgetown (like myself!).</p>
<p>I'm a Linguistics major, I'm actually two months shy from being a grad :)
Any how, a lot of the Lin majors I know are getting into Speech Pathology,I also know someone planning to get into lexicography. But you could also be an accent reduction coach, teach ESL or a foreign language, or use it as a basis to do graduate work in anthropology, sociolin., etc.</p>
<p>I double-majored in Spanish and I'm learning Portuguese (my linguistic training comes in handy). My goal is to be a university professor. Although I enjoy linguistics a lot, I plan to do grad work in literature, at least for my masters. </p>
<p>You still have sometime to decide what you will do, don't stress too much about it now. I actually went from a Soc major to Linguistics and then double-majored in Spanish and minored in Lat Am Studies. If you like Spanish you could be a Spanish language history professor or a spanish linguistics profesor, or a Spanish teacher, a translator.</p>
<p>I'm sure you'll be fine and will figure out what to do. I don't know very much about Lin programs except for the one I'm in. Ah, and I live in CA, probably too far for you.</p>
<p>I gotta run now, but if you would like a "insider" opinion about the classes and what the major is like, feel free to email me.
Best of luck!</p>
<p>Check out Boston University. Their psychology department has always been very strong in language development, psycholinguistics. There's a lot of overlap with linguistics, so I would assume they have a strong linguistics program as well. I may be wrong, but check it out!</p>
<p>If you have the stats, MIT is known for linguistics (thinks Chomsky). Harvard also has a very strong linguistics program.</p>
<p>You can search the forum for "linguistics," though the topic is just re-discussed (not to mention some people spout information about linguistics when they have no idea about the subject or the schools with strong programs).</p>
<p>You can work in IT area as an artificial language developer, you can be an interpreter if you learn another language in addition to your major, a translator, can work for the CIA, FBI, UN, there are things that you can do with it but it's good to get an extra degree</p>