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HEATHEN GIBBERISH
Volume 3 Number 2
Editor/Publisher: Donald Steiny 715 Cowell 425-0382
Associate Editors: Susanna Cumming, Rosemary Bate, Bridget Devlin
EDITORIAL
This issue of the newsletter should be a
real help to these of you that are interested
in linguistics and are trying to find out
what you could be doing.
In cybernetics there is what is called
"the law of requisite variety." It basically
says that a system is controlled by the
element that can do the most things. That is
one of the best things about linguistics.
You can major in linguistics and also pursue
some other area of interest. If you are
interested in teaching English or Spanish,
linguistics is offering the opportunity to
meet your area requirements in these areas.
Linguistics provides important tools to help
you in the study of humans in psychology,
sociology, anthropology and education, in
fact, all of the human sciences are open to
linguistic investigation. The Linguistics
Board is making a special effort to see that
linguistics majors (and anyone who wants) can
become computer literate.
The Linguistics Board is making sure
that everyone has the opportunity to take
some linguistics classes. Next year there
will be a whole lower-division sequence 11-
12-13, that will cover basic introductory
linguistics in several areas. Whatever your
special field of interest, there is probably
a linguistics class that will powerfully
augment your education.
The other day, one linguistics student
was asking Jorge about what will be offered
next quarter in linguistics. She said that
her roommate was interested in taking an
introductory course. What surprised her is
that her roommate asked after watching her
work on her syntax take-home final. Her
roommate must have watched her work very
hard, a necessary condition in syntax. She
wondered why after watching her work so hard,
the roommate would ask about linguistics. I
puzzled over it for a while, and I realized
that perhaps the roommate noticed that the
linguist was jazzed. People do not often
seemed jazzed about what they are doing these
days. I read a lot of depressed stuff about
being a college student, it's hard to be
depressed when your jazzed. Linguistics
students know we are on to something new and powerful.
What you learn in linguistics is not
"book learning." You learn to organize
primary data in a meaningful yet flexible
way. By the time we did our syntax final, we
barely had to look at our notes. We had
learned to look for and describe some of
English syntax, and we were presented with
new data to analyze. It is the analyzing
that is the point, and it is something you
learn how to do, not something you memorize,
or need to look up in a book. Linguistics is
a process, and not a static body of data.
Once you learn linguistics, you never
unlearn it. You discover a new and incredible
world that was right in front of you all the
time. Then you realize that the world you
discover is the world you lived in all the
time, but that it is much deeper and more
beautiful than you had imagined.
You find that even at an undergraduate
level, you can do a thesis or a project in
linguistics that involves work that no one
has ever done before. It's not that you even
have to be that original, it's just that
linguistics is so new, and there is so many
exciting and interesting things that people
are just dying to find out, that you can just
pick something and find it out.
If you look over these courses, and find
one that would augment your life plan, I'm
sure you will try to fit it in. If you want
to learn more about linguistics now, so you
can make choices about what to take next
year, Bill Shipley is teaching the
Linguistics 10 introductory course. If you
want to find out about Bill just read the
course reviews. Not only will this course be
a lot of fun, but it will be a valuable
introduction to linguistics.
I'll tie this up by referring back to
what I said about variety. Consider this:
linguistics has so effectively invaded the
fields of education, psychology, sociology,
and computer science. There are now
linguists in all of these fields. While
computer scientists have trouble finding a
common language with which to talk to
educators, linguists that work with computer
languages can talk to linguists who work in education.
That is the variety of linguistics,
boundaries become indistinct. The world
opens itself up to you in a way that you
can't really understand until you do it. If
you can't imagine a possible world in which
you can do whatever you want, you should
wonder why not. What's stopping you? Perhaps
the only thing that's stopping you from
getting exactly what you want out college is
you had not yet realized that linguistics
offered such a flexible and exciting major.
Object Description
Description
| Title | Page 1 |
| Owning Institution & Contact Info | University of California, Santa Cruz. McHenry Library, Special Collections. 1156 High Street. Santa Cruz, CA, 95064. (831) 459-2547. speccoll@library.ucsc.edu |
| Owning Institution Homepage | http://library.ucsc.edu/speccoll/ |
| Physical Location | McHenry Library, Special Collections |
| Transcript | HEATHEN GIBBERISH Volume 3 Number 2 Editor/Publisher: Donald Steiny 715 Cowell 425-0382 Associate Editors: Susanna Cumming, Rosemary Bate, Bridget Devlin EDITORIAL This issue of the newsletter should be a real help to these of you that are interested in linguistics and are trying to find out what you could be doing. In cybernetics there is what is called "the law of requisite variety." It basically says that a system is controlled by the element that can do the most things. That is one of the best things about linguistics. You can major in linguistics and also pursue some other area of interest. If you are interested in teaching English or Spanish, linguistics is offering the opportunity to meet your area requirements in these areas. Linguistics provides important tools to help you in the study of humans in psychology, sociology, anthropology and education, in fact, all of the human sciences are open to linguistic investigation. The Linguistics Board is making a special effort to see that linguistics majors (and anyone who wants) can become computer literate. The Linguistics Board is making sure that everyone has the opportunity to take some linguistics classes. Next year there will be a whole lower-division sequence 11- 12-13, that will cover basic introductory linguistics in several areas. Whatever your special field of interest, there is probably a linguistics class that will powerfully augment your education. The other day, one linguistics student was asking Jorge about what will be offered next quarter in linguistics. She said that her roommate was interested in taking an introductory course. What surprised her is that her roommate asked after watching her work on her syntax take-home final. Her roommate must have watched her work very hard, a necessary condition in syntax. She wondered why after watching her work so hard, the roommate would ask about linguistics. I puzzled over it for a while, and I realized that perhaps the roommate noticed that the linguist was jazzed. People do not often seemed jazzed about what they are doing these days. I read a lot of depressed stuff about being a college student, it's hard to be depressed when your jazzed. Linguistics students know we are on to something new and powerful. What you learn in linguistics is not "book learning." You learn to organize primary data in a meaningful yet flexible way. By the time we did our syntax final, we barely had to look at our notes. We had learned to look for and describe some of English syntax, and we were presented with new data to analyze. It is the analyzing that is the point, and it is something you learn how to do, not something you memorize, or need to look up in a book. Linguistics is a process, and not a static body of data. Once you learn linguistics, you never unlearn it. You discover a new and incredible world that was right in front of you all the time. Then you realize that the world you discover is the world you lived in all the time, but that it is much deeper and more beautiful than you had imagined. You find that even at an undergraduate level, you can do a thesis or a project in linguistics that involves work that no one has ever done before. It's not that you even have to be that original, it's just that linguistics is so new, and there is so many exciting and interesting things that people are just dying to find out, that you can just pick something and find it out. If you look over these courses, and find one that would augment your life plan, I'm sure you will try to fit it in. If you want to learn more about linguistics now, so you can make choices about what to take next year, Bill Shipley is teaching the Linguistics 10 introductory course. If you want to find out about Bill just read the course reviews. Not only will this course be a lot of fun, but it will be a valuable introduction to linguistics. I'll tie this up by referring back to what I said about variety. Consider this: linguistics has so effectively invaded the fields of education, psychology, sociology, and computer science. There are now linguists in all of these fields. While computer scientists have trouble finding a common language with which to talk to educators, linguists that work with computer languages can talk to linguists who work in education. That is the variety of linguistics, boundaries become indistinct. The world opens itself up to you in a way that you can't really understand until you do it. If you can't imagine a possible world in which you can do whatever you want, you should wonder why not. What's stopping you? Perhaps the only thing that's stopping you from getting exactly what you want out college is you had not yet realized that linguistics offered such a flexible and exciting major. |
