Career prospects
It is not always obvious what career prospects someone trained as a linguist has. Specialization in a particular area of linguistics (as can be partially achieved in the MLTA tracks) can open certain doors, but practice shows that linguists are often employable in areas other than their specialization too. A well-trained linguist is broadly qualified for a variety of jobs. Here are just a few of the most common ones. For more information, see https://www.linguisticsociety.org/resource/linguistics-profession.
Many linguists work as academics, that is, as university professors and researchers. In addition to training students in linguistics in programmes that do not necessarily focus on it exclusively, they conduct research across all areas of linguistics. This research is mostly carried out in collaboration with other senior scientists, postgraduate students and postdocs. It is quite common for research projects to involve collaboration with other fields, leading to interdisciplinary work.
A background in linguistics is also often required for different types of government jobs, in particular for positions related to the design of language and education policies and services, such as language intervention services for kids with speech impairments or delays, plans to support minority languages, or actions to deal with highly multilingual school populations. Work in language education (teaching, programme development, language assessment, etc.) is always a possibility, especially if you have a background in a certain language, often with a requirement for additional pedagogical training. Some of these activities can also be carried out at NGOs or grassroot organizations that rely on activism.
Publishing houses and marketing companies often hire linguists for the more language-oriented aspects of their work as well.
More specific career prospects are related to our linguistics specializations, including, amongst others:
Computational Linguistics
Computational linguists are currently in high demand for the development of virtual assistants and chatbots, as they typically have both linguistic skills in more than one language and mastery of natural language processing techniques. Employers seek people able to design dialogue systems and build grammars and other language resources for the analysis and generation of conversations suitable for different types of customer services. Computational linguists are also employed to assist in the development of machine-learning and deep-learning systems used for natural language processing. They are expected to have a solid command of the methodology and tools needed to annotate texts with different types of linguistic and extralinguistic knowledge, as well as to quantitatively and qualitatively evaluate the results of the trained systems. The Master’s specialization offers three courses in this area, which provide a basic introduction to these skills and techniques. Students will need to independently acquire further skills to be employed as a computational linguist.
The following companies have employed our alumni: Nuance Communications, Everis, Telefonica, Expert Systems, Inbenta, StratioBD, ForceManager and Amazon.
Language Acquisition
- Researching teaching methods informed by language acquisition studies.
- Researching bi- and multilingualism in educational and social contexts and their applications.
- Assessing educational institutions with regard to language policies and practices and enterprises with regard to language policies and promotion.
- Teaching in different learning contexts: formal instruction, content and language integrated learning (CLIL), English-medium instruction (EMI), etc.
- Teaching in bilingual, trilingual and multilingual educational situations at different education levels (primary, secondary, etc.).
- Designing language tests and assessment tools in educational contexts (different learning contexts and multilingual situations).
- Assessing publishing houses with regard to teaching approaches and language teaching/learning materials for different purposes and contexts.
- Collaborating with language therapists and specialists in specific language acquisition/learning situations, on speech disorders and on atypical language development in the private sector or at public organizations.
- Research project management (European and international projects).
- Content writer in digital graphic design including technological applications for research.
Language Teaching
- Teaching languages in all contexts: mother tongue, foreign languages, literacy, conversation, pronunciation, language for specific purposes, technical writing, etc.
- Training language teachers for all educational levels and contexts.
- Preparing language learning materials: textbooks, complementary tasks, programmes and syllabi, etc.
- Designing and developing language learning management systems (LMSs): managing platforms (Moodle, Sakay, Blackboard, etc.), language learning apps, etc.
- Language assessment: exam and portfolio correction and supervision, writing exams, guides and rubrics, etc.
- Researching language-learning contexts: methodology, curricula, materials, classroom practicals, etc.
Lexicons
- Linguistics specialists for official terminology centres and terminology units at international organizations.
- Specialists in language technologies for technology companies.
- Specialists in lexicography, terminology and neology for the publishing sector.
- Linguistics specialists for the development of language resources (dictionaries, grammars, terminologies, textual corpora) at language academies.
- Language planning specialists for government centres and the private sector.
- Specialists in various branches of applied linguistics, especially in the creation and maintenance of lexical and textual resources and computer tools, and in language planning and management, for public and private language services.
- Specialists in language technologies for libraries and documentation centres (information retrieval, document indexing, terminology management).
- Researchers for research and development centres in applied linguistics, especially in the creation of linguistic tools and resources.