Be a Linguistics Survivor
Out-Think. Out-Publish. ... Out Cold.

J. Probst and X. Pedition Robinson
X. Quizzit Korps Center for Advanced Collaborative Studies

As a public service, we have decided to put together an extensive list of heuristics useful for anyone wishing to pursue a career in linguistics and related fields. This, at least, should reduce the chance of readers falling foul of that dread disease: academicus expatriatus.¹

• No area with the prefix post- or the suffix –ism was ever useful. And having both is a serious red flag.

• Never give data to a theorist.

• If you study a language no one else speaks, all your conclusions are automatically correct.

• If no one understands you, you can never be wrong.

• In any given paper, remember that sentence length is inversely proportional to how much the author actually knows about their topic.

• The most useful part of any paper is the bibliography. This is also, perhaps even especially, true of Wikipedia articles.

• If in doübt üse an ümlaüt.³

• Once you begin to redefine terms, anything is possible.

• At conferences, it is rude to point out data flaws...

  • ...or methodological flaws
  • ...or errors in...
    • ...speling
      • ...inclUding cApitalization
    • ...or choice of font
    • ...or pronunciation
    • ...or grammar
    • ...or punctuation.
      • ...or list structure
  • ...or bad fashion sense
  • ...or the fact that you were bored
    • ...or (definitely!) that you were hung over

• The word interesting never actually means “interesting.”

• A paper in the journal is worth two with the reviewers.

• Never bite the hand that funds you.

• Learn the Rochambeau of dissertations:

  • Fieldwork dissertations are safe, unless you have any committee members who are theoreticians.
  • Theoretical dissertations are safe, unless you have any committee members who are typologists.
  • Typology dissertations are safe, unless you have any committee members who are phonologists.
  • Phonology dissertations are safe, unless you have any committee members who are sociolinguists.
  • Sociolinguistic dissertations are safe, unless you have any committee members who are field linguists.

• If you agree with anyone’s definition of any term, you have probably misunderstood them.

• There is nothing left to do in English syntax (except, hopefully, that one topic you’re thinking of doing).

• If you accidentally stumble into the literature department, do not make eye contact.

• The department colloquium will be more tolerable if you keep reminding yourself that the presenter probably wouldn’t understand what you’re studying, either.

• The relevance of a presentation to your research is directly correlated to the quality of free food on offer during the presentation.

	/nuz baɪts/
	A Note on dice ‘dice’—Response to O’Moarfz (2018)—Ἀστράγαλοι Κυβιχησκιῐ
	SpecGram Vol CLXXXI, No 3 Contents