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[alibali]

Hi there,

I was wondering if anybody who is in (Applied) Linguistics or is familiar with the field could tell me the approximate number of applications their dept gets for a (lecturer) position.  I am aware that it's pretty tough to get a job in the Humanities these days but I'm trying to figure out how competitive ALx jobs really are in the UK?  Thanks a lot!

[cayenne]

Not a direct answer to your question, but FWIW, Cambridge doesn't have a linguistic anthropologist right now.

[alibali]

thanks, cayenne.  I didn't have ling anthro specifically in mind.  any applied linguistics subfield--sociolx, pragmatics, sla/ tesol.  all ideas much appreciated!

[cayenne]

thanks, cayenne.  I didn't have ling anthro specifically in mind.

Understood. But I thought I'd throw it out there anyway since I recall you saying on a different thread that Linguistic Anthropology was one of your fields.

[the_walrus]

I don't have an answer about your field specifically, but the answer is going to depend very much on the nature of the job ad.  E.g., if they advertise specifically for a sociolinguist, then there are going to be less applications, obviously, than if they advertise disjunctively for either a sociolinguist, a pragmatics person, L2 acquisition person, or psycholinguist.  Our department tends to advertise disjunctively, if we have more than one niche that we'd be happy to fill.  We then take e.g., a sociolinguist if they're the best or e.g., a psycholinguist if they're the best.

So, I can't give you numbers, but I can say for sure that it'll depend on the nature of the advert.  But perhaps that's obvious.

[sandgrounder]

And thanks to the budget this week, the question is whether departments will be able to advertise at all over the coming years... If the Institute for Fiscal Studies are right in their analysis of the figures announced, and the sector is looking at up to 33% cuts to budgets, as opposed to the more likely 25%, then the next four years are going to be a story of very large numbers of job losses not job adverts.