Breaking Into and Out of Linguistics.

As a result of its isolative pattern of development, linguistics is now beginning to suffer from not having a natural apprenticeship domain, making it difficult for new graduates to find work. The field has been lacking in entrepreneurial tendencies and unimaginative in developing either a potential clientele or a repertoire of uses. Linguistics can be developed within the university by infiltrating other disciplines such as English, education, and speech, where with careful management (e.g., small pilot programs initially) and a cooperative attitude on the part of the linguist, all the disciplines involved linguistics outside the university, the linguist must also overcome his attitude of elitism and discover methods of breaking into such areas as information processing and retrieval, medicine, psychiatry, lexicography, publishing, the communications industry, and educational consulting. Finally, if linguists are to expand territorial imperative, several commitments are necessary: (1) a dramatic change in attitudes, (2) the development of an active information office and placement service, and (3) the orientation of training programs to develop new perspectives. (LG)