Linguistics is present in everyday life, whether it is telling jokes, learning foreign languages, or using voice recognition software. It is at the intersection of many disciplines and involves collaboration. Core graduate faculty members are drawn from the School of Liberal Arts (Anthropology, French, Spanish, Philosophy, etc.) and the School of Science and Engineering. Tulane has a long and distinguished traditional in leading in-depth study of Mesoamerican languages and Louisiana Pidgins and Creoles. In addition, we are gaining excellent reputation for our work in theoretical linguistics and African languages, as well as fieldwork, language documentation, and revitalization. Our program stands out as a center for the linguistic study of a variety of less-commonly-taught languages many of which are made available through our collaboration with the Fulbright Language Teaching Assistant program.
Although our graduate program is relatively new and small, our major strength is in our interdisciplinary focus. Faculty and graduate students see themselves as members of the linguistic community with a shared interest in the wellness, growth and future of the program.
Our most recent collaboration (in 2014) with Computer Science produced an innovation—a masters’ degree in computational linguistics. Through this program, our students get a great opportunity to gain hands-on experience through an internship program at the prestigious Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, Florida. We are excited about our in-coming class and the opportunities they now have to become leaders at the forefront of one of today’s dynamic fields.
The program has strong external academic networks. For example, our new journal, Fleur de Ling: Tulane University Working Papers in Linguistics is published by MIT Linguistics. Announcing the release of the 1st volume last semester, the graduate student editors, Teresa Grubb and Shane Lief said: “We are pleased to announce a milestone achievement for the Linguistics Program…This selection of papers not only showcases our diverse areas of research but also shows how our work can build partnerships between Tulane and other prestigious universities in our academic community.”
Not only are we building strong professional networks through the journal, but our graduate students are trained in communicating their research through the publication process. They also gain experience at working in a team, which is an asset in today’s global academy.
For more information about Graduate Programs in Linguistics, please contact the program director, Thomas Klingler, klingler@tulane.edu