Research in the 21st century

Back in the day, research involved writing to countries far distant to see if they have a book, and waiting six weeks for a response, or longer for them to send the book. But research in the twenty first century is not just about online library catalogues and electronic journals (though you gotta really appreciate them!). I thought I'd share with you some resources I've found out about in the last year or so.

Firstly, the more specifically linguistic resource, and even more specifically Systemic Funcitonal Linguistics. I've joined two email lists - SYSFLING (Systemic Functional Linguistics International Group) and SYSFUNC (Systemic Functional Linguistics in Australia). It's cool to get these emails and realise how broad the community is, and all the interesting things that are being researched and written about and asked about. At the risk of sounding supremely geeky, finding about newly published books hot off the press, and conferences and journals and presentations, is really exciting. But additionally it's a resource you can call upon. I got onto it because I had a tricky bit of analysis and I asked the two SFL lecturers at uni for a verdict and one voted one way and the other the other. But the second also suggested I floated the question on SYSFUNC. I waited until I upgraded to PhD so I felt more worthy to address the community. Then emailed it to the wrong list - SYSFLING. However I then got email upon email from all sorts of people. Later I picked up a book and got excited because several of the people who'd emailed me had written chapters in the book. Kinda suggested I should take them seriously.

Moral of the story: find the useful email lists and join them. Even if you don't participate in the discussions, you learn a lot. And there's email lists out there for all sorts of topics!

Second story, is twitter. Given, there's a lot of people I'd like to be on twitter, and nobody quite in my corner of linguistics, but there's heaps of language and language-learning/teaching related tweets. See the feed which should theoretically be right there:

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I might've missed it, however. But if you doubt me on the benefits of twitter, read this far more eloquent argument. At this point I was going to link to an interesting article but I can't find the link. Oh well. But if you're on twitter, follow me (@jazzlinguist) and/or follow my group (@jazzlinguist/linglang) and I'll add the interesting linguistics / language related tweeters to it. Or go through that list and pick which ones you like. Why do it? Well it's easies to read articles from twitter on the bus than to read all the books at uni I have to read. And my entire twittexistance was justified by a single tweet on my topic: "NOVALanguages:

Glossary of Jazz Terms, defined from the perspective of the Jazz musician: http://www.apassion4jazz.net/glossary4.html" It also helps you keep up to date with current, topical, interesting and amusing information you would not have otherwise heard about. And it can put you in touch with a whole community of people, near and far, who share your interests, obsessions and sufferings.

Moral of the story: networking need not only be at conferences. Get on board with the latest technology and get your story out there. It may lead to further opportunities, it may lead to invitations, it may lead to useful resources or it may just be a useful procrastination tool and we can all do with one of those.

Also a few of these sites and people are on facebook - search for Langology, Linguick, Grammar Girl and Hyperlingo. Useful when you have non-twitterering facebookers you want to share things with.

Well that's all I can think of for the moment. I'll post more if I have any more, but thought I better get this out as we're at the busy time of year for me. I have two seminar presentations, three conference presentations and lots of work to do this semester.  Very glad to have just had a holiday!

3 minutes

Dear imaginary readers,

Fear not! I did not start this blog only to abandon it, or to post once in a blue moon. My month's silence can be contributed to 3 things: 1) studying without internet access; 2) computer break down; 3) proper real no work no study holidays. Oh, and I did write one long blog entry only to have the computer lose it. So I'm back and studying again so I shall sure blog more as I have something to procrastinate.

I wanted to share with you the events of the Three Minute Thesis Competition. I thought it was more widely established than it actually is - started in Australia at University of Queensland, I think, and this is the first year at University of Adelaide. So what is it? According to UQ, "It is an exercise in developing academic and research communication skills. Research higher degree (PhD and MPhil) students have three minutes to present a compelling oration on their thesis topic and its significance in language appropriate to an intelligent but non-specialist audience." 
The Rules: 1 slide, no transitions, no props, no music, just 3 minutes speaking with that single slide.
The Motivation: MONEY! To go to conferences. Which I need. And failing that, a t-shirt designed by Jorge Cham, he of PhD Comics fame.
The Competition: At this stage, to tell the truth, pretty light on. We just had the faculty round, and there were only 6 of us competitors. 3 linguists, 1 creative writing, 1 geography & environmental studies, 1 english lit student. So you'd think the chances of a linguist getting something were pretty good.

So no, I didn't win. None of us 3 linguists did, nor got the people's choice award. I tried to stack the room with linguistics students but none of them came.

Nevertheless it was an interesting experience and as one of the other PhD students pointed out, it helps to know what to say at dinner parties. How to present you and your research to other people without sounding boring. Or conversely, sounding ultra boring if you don't want to talk about it. "What are you doing?" "PhD of linguistics" "What that's about then?" "Grammar."

So I think I went through about 6 different slides and 5 different scripts in the process of deciding what to present. Slide 1 told the story as I've experienced: starting with my brother, who inspired me to choose the topic, moving to Jazz great Fats Waller who seems to express the spirit of jazz, to Tom Cruise because my students chose Top Gun codenames.

But it was a bit too conversational. Then I rewrote the speech to better explain literacy. And it was a good explanation. But it was a good written explanation. No snap when read aloud. And I couldn't think how to turn it into a slide. So I turned it around and tried for the pop culture and intelligent culture hook. The Mighty Boosh's Spirit of Jazz, who doesn't really say anything enlightened or deep and meaningful. And Albert Einstein who seemed to express the spirit of the competition. I tried it in one order then in the other.

So I completely changed tack. And this is what I ended up with:

It's kinda hard to explain in a blog as it's designed to be looked out while the speech is listened to. I told the story of an amalgamated student who does honours and my research. Here's the first few lines and hopefully you'll get the idea:

Let me tell you a story. It’s about a kid in high school who has THE CALLING – maybe he plays trombone, maybe drums, maybe he’s a PIANO MAN. He’s learnt classical piano, but decides to study jazz at university where they teach him that IT DON’T MEAN A THING IF IT AIN’T GOT THAT SWING.

Well, I thought it was good anyway. So I encourage other people to do it. It's great to see some people thinking outside the box and presenting their research in a way that really makes you want to know more.

Now I just have to think of a new idea for next year. Or new songs. Either/or.

The things I wish someone had told me at the beginning

Firstly, I kinda wish that someone had told me to start a blog back then. But I wouldn't have started one as I was still totally insecure in my place as a research student, due to my aforementioned accidental entry and the fact I'd only been studying Linguistics for one year.

So I thought I'd pull together some insights from my first year as a recap, in an effort to share with new students.


1. You don't need to know everything before you enrol
I'm glad I took a little extra time to decide my topic before I enrolled and officially began. But it's a matter of preference, style and fate. The important thing is unless you've already done work on that topic, you're not expected to know much about it. Some people start with an area they want to research, then find the method; others know the method but not the site for research. For me it's great now as I collected all my data within the first 12 months which gives me 12 months to play with it and discover more relevant stuff about it. You can't prepare for all eventualities before you undertake research, and if you have your heart set on one outcome, chances are it won't happen. So things to figure out within the first six months: topic, method, methodological framework, site for research.

2. Plan ahead for Ethics Committee submission - but don't be scared
At least so far as Linguistics research goes, the Ethics committee isn't scary. We're not trying drugs out on humans or make-up on animals. We're interviewing people. It's worth knowing that I completed and submitted my Ethics application within 24 hours having belatedly realised I needed to get it in the next day if I was going to start my research when I wanted to. Ethics Committee meetings are few and far between so you have to work to their schedule. And they'll tell you if there's anything you need to fix up anyway. But remember you need your supervisors signature and 11 copies so there may be chasing required.

3. You really can write your thesis on 2 words - small is beautiful
I've studied 1 assignment from 6 students and I have more data than I can poke a stick at. Or more precisely, more data than I can transcribe, analyse, quantify and tabulate. I've spoken to several PhD students who started studying 30 students and ended up with 12, or started with 12 and ended up focussing on 1. That's not due to attrition - that's just where the pertinent, relevant and MANAGEABLE information falls.

4. Australian Citizens don't pay fees for research degrees
If someone had told me this sooner I might have actually thought of applying for a research degree rather than getting into it accidentally. The Australian Government pays our fees. Woo! And this isn't like HECS where you have a debt to pay back to the government.

5. Get to know your rights
Your rights to a desk, a functioning computer, a supervisor, a co-supervisor... and ask for them.

6. You'll get there
I remember being intimidated by research students who could not only name off the top of their head the writer to read on a topic, but also the year of publication. I surprised myself the other day by doing it to an undergrad student. I excused myself by explaining it's only because I read the same names and publication dates so many times, and then write it so many times as well! It's all repetition! Before long you'll start to carry yourself as a PhD student and ask genuinely intelligent questions of mere coursework and undergrad students!


7. Community community community
My supervisor's big on collaborative-study and socialisation theory of learning, so he likes to get all the students connected to each other. But there's other benefits. Someone to say "Yeah don't worry, that's normal" to you. Someone to borrow books from. Somebody whose time you can waste a little without feeling quite as guilty as you do with your super-busy supervisor. Somebody to check your work. It's all good. Of course, I'm always up for a natter so community works for me. I find I get more done as well when I'm studying with other people in the room - it's more a peer pressure, face-saving thing, but hey, whatever works!

Okay, I don't think there was really much there of use, but who knows...

And now some even less serious things:

• There is power at uni in not carrying around a bag - because it means you either have an office to leave it in or enough friends to look after it for you
• You know you're getting into your topic when everything seems to relate back to it, or you want to do research on everything. And I mean EVERYTHING! "Hmm... that'd be interesting to analyse..."
• Don't let your research subjects choose their own code names for anonymity - you'll end up with Top Gun code names and be forced to refer to "Goose" "Iceman" and "Maverick" all throughout your thesis
• EVERY researcher has a nagging suspicion that a) nobody in your field will find your research interesting or useful; b) nobody outside your field will find your research interesting or useful. At least, I hope it's not just me.
• Beware borrowing books and printing articles. You will not get through all of them. The key is to prevent your desk becoming a fire hazard.
• Conferences: you pay money to be taken seriously. They're probably useful too - I haven't been to one yet, I've just paid the rego fees! Eek!

Who, why and what

Well, hello.

I read two things today and decided to start a blog about my PhD.

The first was "Ten Reasons Why Grad Students Should Blog". I was obviously convinced. Then secondly, a quote was tweeted: "If you can't state it simply, you don't know it well enough". So how well do I know my PhD topic?

So here's who I am and what I'm doing:

ME: PhD student in Linguistics. I studied Bachelor of Arts (Spanish) and Diploma of Languages (French), including a year's exchange in France. I then did Honours in French. I worked for a year, feeling somewhat uninspired, and so decided to start Postgrad Linguistics just so I could teach English overseas. I enjoyed the first semester and decided to extend to a year for the better qualification and teaching classes. And then I thought I may as well finish Masters (by coursework). But I filled out the wrong form and got offered a place in Masters by Research, which I hadn't realised was a course. I started March 2009, I'm now just over a year in, and I've upgraded to a PhD. So I could call this blog "The Accidental PhD" but I won't.

MY RESEARCH: My research topic is officially "Academic Literacies in University Music Students" but I like to call it "Literacy and all that jazz". I've studied a group of six jazz honours performance students, focussing on their 5000 word Research Projects. I'll write another day about the nuances of performance students and jazz students, but as a brief intro, I'm currently interested in how they incorporate music notation into their writing and how they write about music.

THE CONSEQUENCES: At this point, I don't know. I hope that my research will help music students. I've got a great claim to originality as I can't find manyone who has looked at writing about music or incorporating music notation into writing. The downside means there's a lot of work I'll have to do myself and my research is likely to be just introductory research. As I'm sure is the case for everyone, on my good days my research is exciting and fascinating. On my bad days I'm convinced that I'm the only one who will ever be interested in my topic.

So that's me and my research. May discussion and academic intrigue ensue!