Re: News on Jobs

From: tschibasch <tschibasch_at_yahoo.com_at_hypermail.org>
Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2004 20:41:38 -0000

--- In OliveStarlightOrchestra_at_yahoogroups.com, "Georgie Hinklemyer"
<samoolives_at_y...> wrote:
> That's odd. I would have expected "linguists" to be much higher on
> the list...

Blow it out your !_at_#*$.

Sorry, no offense. I could not resist that one. ;-)

Speaking of linguists (whether placed in quotes or not), I attended a
very interesting event on Wednesday evening at UCLA. There were 70
people, and we were in Royce Hall. Here was the event: One of my
former Linguistics Professors, by the name of Peter Ladefoged, had
been hired in 1964 to give consultations for the movie "My Fair Lady",
starring Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn. Now 40 years later, Peter
presented us with movie clips and a slide show, where he commented on
what he did. Very interesting and amusing stuff, especially as Peter
showed that most of the actors in the movie did a terrible job of
speaking real 'cockney'. He played clips from the movie and showed the
phonetic representation, and then spoke the same phrases, indicating
what REAL COCKNEY should have sounded like. Although a big budget
picture, there were apparently no dialect coaches for anyone; Peter
was helping them as a phonetician, to show how proper transcriptions
would look back than, and things like that. For all his efforts, Peter
got no credit for his work on this movie. But he enjoyed himself
immensely...

After the exhibits we were invited back to the labratory. I had not
been there for a long time, and was amazed by all the computer
equipment all over the place. When I was doing stuff (ca. 1983) we
were still recording onto reel tapes. It was wonderful to see some of
my old professors - they all remembered me as well.

I got to meet a lot of the graduate students and see what projects
they are working on now. Great stuff. I really enjoyed myself.

But . . . . would these linguists every get hired outside of academia?
 I would not hold out great hope! Also, it still is a very gay
department, apparently. Not that this matters, but it does make me
wonder why so many people in the field tend to be like that.

John
Received on 2004-02-27 12:41:59