<p>So I have always loved foreign languages (plan on learning Italian, Japanese, Chinese (mandarin and Cantonsese), spanish, and portuguese for sure) and have been planning on majoring in at least 1.</p>
<p>I learned about linguistics for 2 chapters of my AP psych class last year and thought it was awesome. But we didnt really learn about applied linguistics, but i did learn about it by researching it.</p>
<p>I find it to be very interesting and was wondering what you can really do with it.</p>
<p>If people get PhDs in applied linguistics, do companies ever go after PhD holders to consult for either advertisement purposes, or pioneering language programs for international business? I think that would be really cool, and would assume it pays better than being a professor (which i actually want to do a ton, but would love to do both)</p>
<p>"Applied linguistics" tends to be the disciplines within linguistics that don't quite describe the aspects of language but rather how language fits into certain contexts -- sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, computational linguistics, language acquisition, etc. Is that what you mean?</p>
<p>Within these, you can do many things with them. You could work for a tech company developing better language software, perhaps for translation, speech recognition, etc. You could work with psychologists on language pathology. You could work in forensics, applying your knowledge of linguistics to law enforcement. You could do a myriad of things. =)</p>
<p>It would. Linguistics is a very flexible field. Just looking at where Berkeley grads have ended up, I see education, law, speech/language pathology, etc.</p>
<p>okay, so I also really like languages, I'm basically fluent in German and I'm learning mandarin chinese, and was wondering if you can actually get a job in linguistics or languages. I mean, I know that there ARE jobs out there, but how hard are they to come by?</p>
<p>What do you mean "in linguistics or languages"? You mean, jobs related to these? They aren't hard to come by -- they're abundant, in large part because the fields themselves are very flexible and can be applied in myriad ways. Here are some good books on the subject (I've checked some out at my library, and they're very informative):</p>