This article is the introduction to the special issue of the Australian Journal of Linguistics in honour of Barbara Frances Kelly. This article was co-authored with Celeste Rodríguez Louro and Katharine Parton, my two co-editors for the volume. Celeste and Katharine were also two of Barb’s earliest PhD students, and working together on this has been a lovely experience.
This article traces the trajectory of Barb’s career, weaving in the links to each of the contributions to the special issue. We also used this article to provide some reflections on our experience of Barb as a research supervisor, and how she combined intellectual rigour and a deep personal care in a way that has shaped us as researchers and as people.
Abstract
Barbara Frances Kelly, affectionately known as “Barb”, was a language scientist, a tireless advocate for her community and – most importantly – our PhD supervisor. Her sudden passing in late 2022 left her family, friends and colleagues deeply saddened. Yet, amid our grief, we were aware of the mark she had left in our lives. In this introductory paper, we trace Barb’s career in linguistics, linking her contributions to those of the scholars featured in this Special Issue in her honour. We also reflect on the lasting impact of her mentorship. Barb’s warmth, humanity and unwavering support – her deep love for people – were evident in every aspect of her doctoral supervision. From her arrival at The University of Melbourne in 2005 through to her senior years in academia, she guided us with courage and an unshakable belief in our potential. Barb’s supervision was a rare blend of intellectual rigour and genuine care. Her sharp mind and compassionate mentorship created a unique experience – one that shaped us as scholars and individuals. We argue that her approach exemplifies the foundations of successful doctoral supervision: a combination of scholarly excellence and deep human connection. This legacy lives on, inspiring future generations.
Citation
Rodríguez Louro, Celeste, Katharine Parton, and Lauren Gawne. (2025). ‘For the love of people: Introduction to the special issue in honour of Barbara Frances Kelly’, Australian Journal of Linguistics, 45/3: 259–74. DOI: 10.1080/07268602.2025.2514173
This time last year came the sudden, unexpected news of the death of Barbara F. Kelly’s. Barb Kelly was one of my undergraduate lecturers, my principle PhD supervisor, and eventually a collaborator and friend. I have mentioned Barb in passing on the blog over the years, but now we’ve muddled through a year without her, I finally feel like I have some space to reflect on the fact she has been one of the most important influences the course of my life.
Barb was many things to many people. She managed to do this by being deeply curious about people, and had a devastatingly compelling ability to give you her full attention when you were talking with her. She was interesting because she was interested; her friendships, hobbies and tastes were eclectic and wide-ranging. There’s a really beautiful obituary from our colleague Nick Evans that captures the story of Barb’s life. This is my story of how Barb shaped me as a linguist, a researcher and a person.
I first encountered Barb when she was teaching in my final year of a Bachelor of Arts. The third year subject Language and Culture was a romp through kin terms, colour theory, names, primates, spatial systems, social intelligence, politeness, and so much more. Barb was an enthusiastic lecturer, with anecdotes, contextualisation and rich examples every week.
One week she introduced us to the topic of gesture. I was intrigued! How had I made it through a whole degree without encountering this work! (now that I write courses, I know how hard it is to find space in the curriculum for every topic worthy of attention, and gesture rarely features at all in undergraduate coursework). At the end of the lecture Barb said “this is one of my favourite topics. You’re not allowed to do you’re final assignment on this unless you see me first, because I don’t want to read a bad assignment on this topic.”
I still remember when I went to talk to her about it, and experienced the full intensity of the undivided attention of Barb Kelly for the first time. At some point, mildly bewildered by all this new reading, I wondered how we even knew that people paid attention to different types of gesture. “I always thought that would be a good topic for an honours thesis,” Barb mentioned, before walking me back to something more manageable for a class paper.
[A brief time jump: The last time Barb and I caught up, it was getting to the end of the year and we were trying to avoid editing a paper. Somehow we got talking about the first time we met. Barb’s main recollection was: “You were so weird.” Barb thought it was very funny, but I also think that being interesting to Barb Kelly was a delightful compliment.]
A couple of weeks later, I went back and asked “could… I be the person who did that paper you mentioned?” At the very end of the final semester of my degree, I threw in my plans for a fourth year of Art History. I’m not usually one to change big plans so dramatically, but I decided that I wanted to do linguistics if I got to do the kind of linguistics Barb did. Of course, many years later when we were talking about it she laughed “I wouldn’t have suggested it if I didn’t want you to do it!”
That’s how we got working on a small honours project to see what kinds of gestures and other movement people report that they pay attention to. It was an in-the-spirit replication of an old task Adam Kendon set up in the 1970s with a projector and silent film, but we used a computer and software that let people mark what they thought a gesture was (this became, many years later, Gawne & Kelly 2014). Just as I was finishing up data collection Barb disappeared. She had colorectal cancer and (although I didn’t know this at the time) the prognosis was terrible.
At the end of that year I felt quite lost. I had finished the project, but didn’t really know what to do next. I managed to get an office job for a while; it was fun to have a steady income after years of student life, but I got bored pretty quickly. I had planned a long nonsense holiday in Europe to distract myself. Barb had returned to work and I emailed her about catching up for coffee. I even fact-checked this in my email archive, and apparently I asked to “pick [her] brain about post-grad courses”. It’s easy to forget, with the benefit of hindsight, just how little idea I had of what I could do, what I should do or how I should go about making any of it happen. The only people I knew who had PhDs were the ones who taught me. I do remember we talked about where there was good work being done, the difference between Australian/UK and North American PhD programs and what kind of topics I might do. Barb then mentioned that she had a project she was working on and they were looking for someone do contribute by doing a PhD on evidential systems of a Tibeto-Burman language from Nepal. How was I meant to come up with a better idea than that? She promised me that her oncologist gave her at least the four years I needed to finish a PhD, because I am excessively practical and Barb had a very good sense of humour. I mailed my application to do a PhD at The University of Melbourne from a post office in Malta while on my holiday. I only mention this because it sounds very nonsense and like something form the 1930s.
[A disclaimer here: I usually strongly discourage students from staying at their undergaduate institution for graduate study. But I also point out I’m a giant hypocrite and staying at UoM to work with Barb was a good decision for me. Please take into account the survivor bias. Barb believed in me and that was more useful than anything another institution could have provided]
The week before I started my PhD with Barb, we caught up off campus with Sara, another PhD student who was about to start working with Barb. Barb used it as an opportunity to explain to us that even though a PhD would be big and demanding and important, it was also important that we didn’t let it stop us living the rest of our lives, “if you need to, take a break to tour with a band or have a kid, that’s important too” I was worried she was maybe expecting I had time to start a band as well as do a PhD? but it also left a lasting impression on me. She was so good at talking through the linguistic content of what I was doing, but also socialising me into the expectations of academia, while being realistic about life also happening. With Rachel Nordlinger as co-supervisor and Jill Wigglesworth as chair, they were an amazing, sometimes slightly terrifying, dream team who took their roles as supervisors, teachers and mentors seriously.
After my PhD, Barb joined me in the work with Andrea Berez-Kroker on data management. We also tinkered away on other things; including getting my honours thesis published. She helped me plan job applications, and even loaned me her office when I had video interviews. When I left Melbourne for post-docs we’d meet in different corners of the world. She was supportive and practical during many of my less optimistic moments while I was precariously employed. I enjoyed that my postdoc work allowed me to return to gesture, and spend more time doing lingcomm stuff, while still continuing to do work on evidentials and language documentation. Having Barb as a role-model mean that I normalised having a range of interests as a strength. I still spend a lost of time at a desk, but it’s as far away as possible from the monotonous office job I left to come back to do a PhD.
In late 2020 Barb had a cardiac arrest. When La Trobe offered me an ongoing job in that same week, I apologised to her for texting her while she was in ICU. Obviously this is important because I’m the protagonist of my own story, even though it’s a story about Barb, but I also wanted to mention it because a recurring theme in conversations over the last year has been “but, even when she technically *died* she still came back”, which hasn’t really helped things sink in.
I am pretty much the age Barb was when we first met. And, a couple of years into a tenured teaching/research role, I’m in a similar place professionally. And that’s very much thanks to Barb. Without Barb I would not have done honours in linguistics, and I would not have come back to do a PhD. I wouldn’t have been ready to face the grueling academic job market, and I wouldn’t have normalised the importance of having more in life to define you than your job.
I miss talking with Barb all the time. There have been moments in the last year when I’ve been introducing someone to the bouba/kiki test, writing about my favourite gesture papers or talking through a problem a grad student is having with their writing, and I get to continue Barb’s passion and enthusiasm. I am so grateful for the influence she has had on me as a linguist, teacher, supervisor and human, and I’m grateful I get to pass that on.
Co-authored papers This is a list of all the published papers for which we were co-authors. I’m proud that they represent a good range of our shared interests across gesture studies, language documentation, and data management. We have one more forthcoming paper, a handbook chapter on discourse in Tibeto-Burman languages, which is the other major area of shared interest that carried through my PhD work and beyond.
Gawne, Lauren, Chelsea Krajcik, Helene N. Andreassen, Andrea L. Berez-Kroeker & Barbara F. Kelly. 2019. Data Transparency and Citation in the Journal Gesture. Gesture 18(1): 83–109. https://doi.org/10.26181/5f57fddc85ebb [Superlinguo blog post]
Berez-Kroeker, A.L., L. Gawne, S. Kung, B.F. Kelly, T. Heston, G. Holton, P. Pulsifer, D. Beaver, S. Chelliah, S. Dubinsky, R. Meier, N. Thieberger, K. Rice & A. Woodbury. 2018. Reproducible Research in linguistics: A position statement on data citation and attribution in our field. Linguistics 56(1): 1-17. https://doi.org/10.1515/ling-2017-0032 [Superlinguo blog post]
Gawne, L., B.F. Kelly, A.L. Berez- Kroeker & T. Heston. 2017. Putting practice into words: The state of data and methods transparency in grammatical descriptions. Language Documentation & Conservation 11: 157-189. [OA PDF] [Superlinguo blog post]
Gawne, L. & B.F. Kelly. 2014. Revisiting ‘significant action and gesture categorisation. Australian Journal of Linguistics 34 (2): 216-233. https://doi.org/10.26181/5e4b684d8f1e9
Gawne, L., B.F. Kelly & A. Unger . 2010. Gesture categorisation and understanding speaker attention to gesture. In Y. Treis & R. De Busser (Eds), Selected papers from the 2009 conference of the Australian Linguistic Society. Melbourne: La Trobe University. [PDF]
August 2023 marks ten years since I was awarded a PhD in Linguistics. I
submitted the thesis for examination in February 2013, it was examined
by around May, and the final version with corrections done by some time
in the middle of the year. August is when I dressed up and the degree
was conferred, so that’s the date on the testamur that now hangs in my
office.
The weirdest thing about this decade is that it means
I’ve spent longer having a PhD than doing something that was such an
important time in my life.
My work has continued to grow from,
but still draw on, my thesis research. I have been working with speakers of Syuba
as well as Lamjung Yolmo, to continue to document this language family.
I’ve moved from a focus on evidentiality to look at reported speech, discourse
and gesture. These all still require an approach that looks at both
grammatical structures and how people use them, directly continuing the kind of approach I took in my PhD. I’m particularly proud
of the gesture work, as this is a return to an older interest.
I
didn’t publish my PhD as a single monograph, but turned it into a number
of revised and refined papers. I publishing the descriptive
grammar as a book, which was an expanded version of a slightly absurd 30k word appendix to the thesis. Below is a list of those publications, as you can see it took me
quite a few years to find homes for all of this work.
I’ve also
been lucky to take my research in other directions too; my gesture work
has expanded into emoji and emblems, and I’ve also been writing about the
data management and lingcomm work I’ve been doing. This work has
increasingly been happening with collaborators, I love how much better
work becomes when people talk each other into do their best thinking.
I
know I’m very fortunate to still be researching and teaching a decade
after graduating, and that I have an ongoing job that lets me plan for
the next decade.
The thesis work informed a lot of my research, but these are the publications taken directly from the thesis:
Gawne, L. 2016. A sketch grammar of Lamjung Yolmo. Asia-Pacific Linguistics. [PDF] [blog summary]
Gawne, L. Looks like a duck, quacks like a hand: Tools for eliciting
evidential and epistemic distinctions, with examples from Lamjung Yolmo
(Tibetic, Nepal). 2020. Folia Linguistica, 54(2): 343-369. [Open access version][published version][blog summary]
Gawne, L. Questions and answers in Lamjung Yolmo Questions and answers in Lamjung Yolmo. 2016. Journal of Pragmatics 101: 31-53. [abstract] [blog summary]
Gawne, L. 2015. The reported speech evidential particle in Lamjung Yolmo. Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area, 38(2): 292-318. [abstract][pre-publication PDF]
Evidentiality in Lamjung Yolmo. 2014. Journal of the South East Asian Linguistics Society, 7: 76-96. [Open Access PDF]
It’s been four years since my last interview with a speech pathologist,and today’s interview with Petrea Cahir helps show that there’s a lot of variation in how speech pathologists work. Petrea works in a paediatric hospital, and coordinates research alongside doing clinical work. On top of that, Petrea is currently a PhD candidate. A PhD does mean you’re a student again, but being a PhD candidate involves more of the skills you often develop in the workplace - good time management, independent work and a sense of purpose (and perspective!). You can follow Petrea on Twitter (@petrea_cahir).
What did you study at university?
I completed
an Bachelor of Arts/Bachelor of Science and then did Honours in Linguistics. A
few years later I did Masters in Speech Pathology and after 7 years of working,
and 2 children later, I started a PhD which I’m half way through.
In my
undergrad I majored in psychology and linguistics – in my eyes this was an
exciting combination: The neuropsychology, biology and physiology subjects gave
me an understanding of the neurophysiological mechanisms of language which I
now apply day-to-day.
The
linguistics subjects I chose were really varied – aside from the core subjects,
I was generally more interested in the applied linguistics including cross-cultural
communication and sociolinguistics but also loved semantics and phonology. At my
university there was a strong focus on Aboriginal Australian languages which is
how I ended up doing language documentation and investigation of verb functions
of Malak Malak, an Aboriginal language.
What is your job?
After
Honours I started working as a research assistant at a child health research
institute on a longitudinal study of child language development with a gaggle
of speech pathologists. Myself and another RA were linguistics graduates and
both of us have since pursued research careers at the same institute in Global
and Indigenous Health. The exposure to speech pathology inspired me to do a
masters in it as I saw this as a way to apply my linguistics skills and ideally
contribute to addressing social inequities and afford social change in the
health and education settings.
I
worked as a speech pathologist on the acute team at a paediatric hospital for
almost 10 years. I was mainly attached to the neurology, neurosurgery, general
and developmental medicine teams seeing children with complex medical and
neurodevelopmental needs.
How does
your linguistics training help you in your job?
I
apply linguistics to my research and clinical jobs every day. My deep
understanding of phonetics and phonology allows me to efficiently compile
phonetic inventories for kids with complex articulatory systems (e.g., kids
with dysarthria associated with cerebral palsy), voice disorders, and bilingual
children. Thanks to my semantics training, my assessments of language disorders
associated with traumatic brain injury (e.g., aphasia) or developmental
language disorders always take a deep dive. My PhD is in Aboriginal children’s
ways of using English so I’m certainly applying cross-cultural and
sociolinguistic knowledge there.
Other
than those obvious applications, the linguistics training in identifying
patterns makes me a better clinician. This skill helps me apply clinical
evidence to groups of patients, work through complex patient and family
histories, and identify what is and isn’t working for families.
Do you have any advice do you wish
someone had given to you about linguistics/careers/university?
I have always shied away from calling myself a linguist because I don’t have a
postgrad qualification. I look back and think this is wrong – if you are
trained in analysing speech and language then you are a linguist and those
skills are definitely transferable to other areas, in creative ways.
Be
flexible and open to opportunities as they come along. I actually never saw
myself working in academia and here I am doing a PhD but I was only approached
for the opportunity because of my life, meaningful networking and work
experience. If you’re looking at doing a PhD you don’t have to rush into it.
Working and life experience have meant that I have a great deal of perspective
when it comes to completing my PhD… maybe too much!
Any other thoughts or comments?
There’s
strength in diversifying. The current funding climate in research is in quite
the downward phase of the cycle (even before the pandemic) so I’m not
optimistic about postdoctoral opportunities. But because I have a diverse
background in both clinical and research experience, I know I will have
options.
What’s next? I remember sitting in Prof Janet
Fletcher’s office for a practical phonetics exam and spotting a Forensic
Linguistics journal…. That area has always been in the back of my mind – maybe
it will come to the front!
I have the good fortune to be able to spend time with lots of graduate students and early career researchers (and I am an ECR myself). I feel like there are some common themes to some of the conversation I have with people, and I wanted to draw some of those themes into one place.
Going through the PhD and navigating postdoc life is different for everyone, and different bits of what I’ve written below will make sense to different people at different times. This makes some of the things I say a little contradictory. Academia isn’t the easiest to stay in, and I know that at some times there will be systemic reasons that people might have problems with some of this advice, or it won’t be appropriate, but these are things I feel like I say to people a lot.
Attend the seminars
If your department has seminars, go. Even when it’s on topics that aren’t immediately relevant to your interests. It helps broaden your experience, keeps you up to date with what others are working on, and at the very worst, helps to remind you why there are some areas of linguistics that aren’t your jam. It’s a low effort way to be a professional.
Have a question ready
If you go to any seminar, have a question ready - even if you don’t end up asking it. This helps you practice your critical thinking, particularly in areas you aren’t well-versed in, shows your willingness to learn, and means that you have practice for when it’s really important, e.g. attending conferences, job interviews or surviving your own defence/viva/completion talk. Also, giving a talk and having no questions is always an awkward experience, so think of it as paying things forward.
Administrative staff are humans
Universities sometimes feel like they just like generating paperwork to distract you from research. Don’t forget that the people who make the university run are the professional staff - they’re often more qualified than you are, and have a much better grasp on how the system works. Whatever bureaucratic title they get in your institution, treat them with respect - and not just because they might help you at some point - because they’re humans and being nice to other humans you work with is a good thing to do.
Use social media
Even at a moderately-sized conference these days, there’s a second conversation happening on Twitter, and it’s amazing. Since moving to Europe, I’ve gone to conferences in the UK, Europe and the USA where I’ve not met people before, and been able to meet up with linguists who I know from Twitter. It can be a great way to talk directly with academics you may not get to meet in real life, or who are quite senior, if you follow some basic politenesses (related: @allthingslinguistic post with excellent advice about Twitter/live tweeting).
Don’t confuse social media with work
I love the linguist community on Twitter, and I regularly pop up there, but that doesn’t mean it’s part of my job. Don’t let social media distract you from the task at hand, use an internet blocker if you need to get that thesis chapter or journal article done (I use SelfControl or RescueTime). And don’t confuse people being upbeat on social media with them doing better at academia life than you are - remember we all get to curate our best self for the rest of the world to see.
Volunteer for things
I am (no surprise) a participator. Getting involved in whatever is happening in my department or city has led to some great stuff that I didn’t think about at the start. It allows you to sample a range of skills and ideas that you might not otherwise come across. Resume building is a thing too, but that’s more a nice side effect, if you’re only doing something to build your CV then maybe you’re not building the CV for the job you really want?
Don’t work for free
During your PhD, you’ll want to volunteer for things, but as you get a firmer idea of what you’re doing, and what you’re interested in (see below), it’s ok to become more discriminating. It’s taken a while, but unless I can see a clear benefit to me, I don’t have to say ‘yes’ to everything that comes along. Sometimes the benefit is not financial - I read the work of colleagues who I know I will benefit from sending work to in the future - but it’s ok to step away from doing things for ‘experience’, and that time can come sooner than later. If you’re an opportunity fiend like me, get yourself a couple of people who you can use to talk you down from signing up for another great project when you’ve already got enough to do.
Know your interests
This one doesn’t necessarily come easily, if you’re like me and interested in all the things. Knowing that you’re specifically interested in 3 or 4 things makes it easier to assess opportunities, jobs and other things. For example, I’m interested in evidentiality, gesture, Tibeto-Burman and data management. A project has to hit at least a couple of those for me to consider it. It took me a while to clearly articulate such a simple list to myself, and I don’t imagine it will stay that way forever, but it’s a good tool for me at the moment.
Other Tumblinguists and TumblrAcademics please share your advice too!
OK, here’s the boring real talk - the majority of people who do a PhD don’t find jobs in academia (these numbers from a 2013 Atlantic article seem rather optimistic to me). A large number of my colleagues and friends from linguistics have found jobs at universities that are sometimes called ‘alt(ernative) academic’ - working as administrators, research officers, and in student support. I wanted to interview one of them about the experience, and Olga Maxwell kindly agreed.
Olga is an amazing phonetician, she’s worked on prosody and intonation, with a focus on the relationship between first and second languages. As you’ll see below, she manages to juggle a role teaching professional skills to academics, and a consultancy where she directly applies her research to helping improve communication in medical interactions. You can keep in touch with Olga’s work via Academia.edu and LinkedIn.
What did you study at university?
I completed my
undergraduate studies in Ukraine. My 5-year Bachelor Degree with Honors was in
Linguistics & Philology, Teaching English Language and Literature. The
degree included a number of Linguistic, Applied Linguistic and Education subjects, including Phonetics, Semantics, Stylistics, History of the English Language,
Grammar of English, Syntax, Morphology, Discourse Analysis, Teaching
Methodologies, and Program Evaluation.
In addition to a
number of purely Linguistic subjects, I also studied Philosophy, Latin, World
Literature (over 3 years) and the Spanish language. I find these subject gave
some personal growth and overall enrichment, but have had no practical
application.
Back in Ukraine, I
was teaching English as a foreign language to children and adults as well
lectured and tutored a number of Linguistic subjects. When I came to Australia
in 1999, I was not sure what I could do with my educational background. For a
while, I worked at AMES Australia teaching English to migrants as well teaching
Academic English.
I have always
enjoyed teaching English and teaching in general. However, it was not enough
for me. This is when I decided to enroll in Masters in Applied Linguistics
(TESOL) and did a thesis in Experimental Phonetics. As the next step, I did a
PhD in Linguistics in Applied Linguistics, with a thesis topic related to
Laboratory Phonology, Phonetics, Second Language Acquisition and World Englishes.
What is your job?
My current job is
slightly different to what I expected to be doing at this stage of my career. My
position is classified as a lecturer, but does not involve teaching discipline
specific subjects. I provide professional development for academic staff and
assist with various aspects of learning and teaching. For example, curriculum design,
blended and online learning and teaching, curriculum evaluation and
development, developing affective assessments, and digital literacies. I get to
do workshops, one-on-one professional development sessions, and seminars. I had
a similar job before I started my PhD research.
Besides my main job,
I also work as a linguistic consultant. This is something that is much closer
to what I have studied at university and researched. For over 8 years, I have been working with international medical
graduates, various professions. I have developed and delivered workshops and programs across
Victoria and Queensland, in collaboration with senior consultants and
educators. Since 2014, I have been involved in the design and delivery of a
course for the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatry, funded
by the Australian Government. Some of the aspects that I have taught over the
years include language and communication skills, clinical interview
skills, communication of empathy, skills to explain and negotiate, and
cross-cultural clinical communication.
How does your linguistics training help you
in your job?
In terms of my main job, I am not
sure my linguistic background contributes to a large degree. Perhaps, when it
comes to developing assessments, creating marking rubrics, and evaluating
programs (Applied Linguistics). In my BA degree, I also had a prominent
educational focus. This is probably helping me much more in my current job.
Linguistic knowledge and skills, however,
have definitely contributed to my development as a consultant. Given my strong
interest in World Englishes, second language acquisition and spoken language, I
was able to develop programs, workshops and resources tailored to various first
language backgrounds and varieties of English. My research experience gave me a
better understanding of and appreciation for the subtle differences in the use
of English language in day to day conversation and in the clinical
environment.
Do you have any advice do you wish someone
had given to you about linguistics/careers/university?
In my undergraduate
degree, I was always told that I would become an English language teacher.
While during my MA and PhD years, the only career path I could see (perhaps the
result of the environment) was academia. It would have been great, if I had some
advice on other possible pathways, where I could do more applied linguistic
work. I am most likely unaware of all the possible options.
Any other thoughts or comments?
It would be
interesting to find out how career choices are made. For example, in may case, I
love Linguistics and I would like to stay in academia, but there aren’t that
many jobs locally. I am not willing to move to another country due to family
reasons. Hence, I need to find alternative ways of developing my career while
still remaining in the academia/university environment.
This post is inspired by reading two books, and a conversation. The first book is Aikhenvald’s The Art of Grammar: A Practical Guide and the second is Peterson’s The Art of Language Invention. Aikhenvald is practical, but only with regard to the lofty, theoretical bits of grammar writing. I liked how Peterson talked about typology of language, but also occasionally about more mundane things, like coding fonts. The conversation was with a friend who is in the process of writing a descriptive grammar.
I wrote my PhD thesis in a descriptive model, focusing on some specific bits of the grammar. I’ve also written a more detailed grammar of Lamjung Yolmo, which I’m hoping will be published… eventually (academic publishing is a bit of a grind). So, I’m not an expert but I have got my hands pretty dirty in this area. These are just my suggestions, but they may be useful if you’re starting a descriptive grammar, or any long format academic publication. I can’t honestly say I completely abide by these rules myself, but I’d like to think I try to, and I survived my PhD. I’m going to put the rest below this ‘read more’ section now because I don’t know how much ranting is going to happen.
I’m currently doing some research that involves reading lots of descriptive grammars - both published books and PhD dissertations - of languages from all around the world. It’s very enjoyable, but I’m really struggling to find a sufficient number of PhD dissertations to include.
This has lead me to spend a lot of time musing about the inaccessibility of much PhD research. I feel a little sad that people will spend 4 years of their lives on important and useful research, and it never makes it beyond a bound copy in their university library. I have been going directly to specific institutions, and emailing lots of colleagues, and today I thought I’d put a wider call-out up here. Can you help me out?
I’m looking specifically for:
PhD dissertations/theses (no MA sorry!);
Dated 2003-2012;
That are based on primary documentation of a language, and are either a grammatical description of the whole system, or focus on a specific morpho-syntactic area;
Are not from Australia or the USA (as I have many from both countries);
Are in English;
That I could access as an electronic copy.
As you can see, it’s a rather specific list - but I only need another 5 or 6 to round out my collection. If you’ve written a PhD that fits this description, or have one in your PDF library (the Pokemon collection of the modern academic) then let me know in the comments below, as a reblog, or by emailing me at superlinguo(at)gmail.com.
This project is shaping up to be a really exciting one, and I look forward to sharing it with you in the future!!
On Saturday I had my PhD graduation ceremony, and thought I’d share some pictures of myself in a silly hat with you. I’m now officially qualified, and will probably spend at least a week signing off emails as Dr Lauren.
Compared to other parts of the completing process (see here and here), this felt like something for my family to share in, rather than something to celebrate for myself, or with colleagues. Also, it’s a rare day that I get to see Andrew in a suit. I decided to wear a Tibetan dress that friends had made for me last time I was in Nepal. It was a rad colour, but it did make walking up stairs a bit fraught.
Although it was the celebration of the end of something, it also felt like to the start of the next chapter.
Today over at the Thesis Whisperer I’ve written a post about how flummoxing it can be to come out the other end of the PhD experience. I wrote that piece only a couple of weeks after submitting - which I’m glad I did because I’m not sure I could easily replicate the bewilderment I felt at that stage.
It’s hard to believe that 3 months have gone by in that time. It’s not that I haven’t kept myself busy - I’ve been teaching, learning Auslan and writing job applications and papers. I thought that I’d take this opportunity to fill you in on how I’ve been feeling since I wrote that post.
My completion talk was lovely - so many people from the department turned up and Andrew was subjected to my work in a proper talk for possibly the first time. That was definitely a thumbs up experience.
Getting results back was actually more of a downer than I had expected. I was very lucky in that my examiners returned it in only 2 months (the grad school gives an average of 4 months, and I know many who have waited longer). I hadn’t realised how much I was enjoying not thinking about it, until I was pulled from that pleasant ignorance. My changes were minimal, but I still had to go back into the thesis and haul some stuff around. I could not be more happy with the thoughtful reading of my work by two academics I regard so highly, but it was uncomfortable how underwhelming I found the whole experience. It was especially noticeable because everyone else was so happy for me. I’ve talked to a few other people about that period and they’ve mentioned similar experience, so perhaps I’m not alone there.
If I wasn’t prepared for how underwhelming the examination experience was, then I was also not prepared for how invincible I feel now. I really feel that my ideas have been tested and accepted. Gone are many of the feelings of being an academic impostor - you should see how assertive my writing has become!
I’m really looking forward to graduating (don’t worry, there will be photos) and getting as much of my work published and presented as possible. Although I feel really confident about my work I do feel a prickling uncertainty about the future. At the moment I’m wondering about things like how long should I keep working a handful of casual short term jobs while publishing in my spare time? Things like that may not be any clearer than they were a few months ago, but knowing that I’ve come this far has certainly built my confidence in looking forward.
It’s done! Earlier in the week I submitted the final bound copies of my PhD, which is the last official part of the process! I chose green, partly to match the dictionary and partly to make it easier for my supervisors to see on their shelves.
Now I just have to wait until graduations in August!
P.S. Hi to all of our new followers! Welcome to Superlinguo!
You know that feeling of anticipation/dread you sometimes get when you wait for an assignment to be marked? Imagine that your assignment was 100,000 words long and took you four years to write and you can imagine some of the dread that I felt waiting for my thesis to be read by two independent examiners.
In Australia we don’t have a defense/viva system of examination based on a presentation for PhDs. Instead the entire examination is of the thesis as a written piece of work. The average time it takes for a PhD to be examined is around 4 months according to the Graduate School at Melbourne Uni - although I know one person who once waited 9 months.
So when I found out that my thesis has been examined in less than two months you can imagine that I was rather surprised. And any dread was unfounded - both examiners have passed it with only minor changes! That means that in the next month or so I’ll make those and then I’ll get to make some pretty hard-bound copies to show you!
