"It is like Disney World for linguists."

- John Powell, LSA Student Ambassador, LSA Annual Meting 2020, New Orleans, LA

We have a lot to say and we have a lot to say about language. We might perhaps even have a lot to say in multiple languages. We are the first group of Student Ambassadors for the Linguistic Society of America. The LSA Student Ambassador team is comprised of graduate and undergraduate students from across the globe and a variety of universities. We have representatives from large Tier 1 Research Universities to small liberal arts colleges located in the United States, as well as universities in Argentina, Canada, Germany, Pakistan, Spain and beyond. We are a team of passionate learners and educators bound together by the mission to increase engagement and generate awareness about the LSA among students early in their academic careers, as they prepare to become the next generation of linguists. We work together to increase the visibility of the LSA across multiple campuses and strengthen our connections with linguistics programs and departments across the globe.  

As Student Ambassadors we are largely impacted and influenced by the abundant and diverse events hosted by the LSA and its varous partnerships. For example, every year the LSA hosts its Annual Meeting. The Annual Meeting is a vibrant 4-day event held every first week in January. This event brings together linguistics professionals and students from many stages of academia and various professions, and provides them the opportunity to share research, network, and socialize with colleauges from academia, industry, and government. Additionally, the interactive programming provides several professional development activities for linguists at all stages of their careers. 

This event draws well over 1,000 attendees each year, of which one third are students. Among these student attendees are many of our enthusiastic LSA Student Ambassadors. Which is why we want to invite our readers, and anyone interested in linguistics or the LSA, to read what the next generation of expert scholars have to say about the LSA Annual Meeting, our resarch interests, and why we are a part of the LSA family and Student Ambassador team. 

Top four reasons to attend the LSA Annual Meetings: 

1. Networking

This past year over 1,100 linguistic professionals and students attended the Annual Meeting, which was held in New Orleans, LA. Part of this amazing turnout is the opportunity to make life-long, meaningful professional and personal connections, between fellow students, mentors, and well-established experts in the field. There were several panels, mixers, luncheons, ceremonies, dinners, receptions, poster sessions, and workshops fostering occasions for attendees to make new connections and rekindle old ones. 

Below is what a few of us had to say about networking at the Annual Meeting: 

“The LSA provides a wonderful venue for linguists to get together. I have been able to network with some of the key scholars in my field, which has been important for my research.”

"We had an amazing time reconnecting with friends from the summer institute, getting to know new colleagues, meeting our heroes in the field, and spending the first week of the year in New Orleans. Whether you're an undergraduate or graduate student, we'd highly recommend attending a future annual meeting.” 

2. Learning and Information Exchange 

The diversity of the LSA is reflected not only in its membership, but also in the varied research disciplines and subdisciplines supported by the LSA. For example, this past Annual Meeting offered workshops, plenary speakers, symposiums, and workshops in a huge array of topics ranging from macro topics like syntax, pragmatics, phonology, semantics, sociolinguistics, dialects, pedagogy, foreign language, computational linguistics, and multilingualism, to racial inclusion in linguistics, sociolinguistic analysis of various dialect morphologies, language contact zones, and Northwestern Amazonian languages.

Below is what a few of us had to say about learning at the Annual Meeting:

"The sheer diversity of different research at LSA is incredible. The plenaries have been exceptional and every year there are film screenings which are incredibly moving."

“I heard about what is going on in the field, and the annual meeting also allows me to know about what is going on in LSA sister societies.”

Of course these are just a sprinkling of the various topics for which the LSA advocates, and a more comprehensive list of research, events, and speakers from the 2020 Annual Meeting can be found here.

3. Professional Development

As rising scholars in our fields, spanning across multiple disciplines, it is important to seek out and take advantage of professional development opportunities. As simultaneous educators and students, we continuously look for efficient and effective ways to not only enhance our CV, but most importantly to expand our knowledge of what is happening in our fields, strengthen our research and writing skills, practice presenting and pitching our thesis research, and understand the field of linguistics within and outside of academia. The opportunities for professional development during the LSA Annual Meeting are abundant. 

Below is what a few of us had to say about professional development at the Annual Meeting: 

“My personal contribution included my participation in three relevant roles: (1) as a presenter of an original research poster on my dissertation advances, (2) as a member and facilitator of the Linguistics in Higher Education Committee (LiHEC) meeting with regards to education policies, scholarship of teaching and learning, and indigenous language education, and (3) as a founder and co-coordinator of the LSA Student Ambassador initiative to improve student engagement with the LSA on campuses across the US and beyond.”

"You can give a talk, present a poster, volunteer at any number of events, and learn about the latest research in the different subdisciplines of linguistics."

“Aside from these important academic alliances fostered fittingly following the UN International Year of Indigenous Languages (2019), this conference maximized its impact on the attendees from all around the world by providing mini-courses for professional development, pop-up mentoring for students and early-career researchers, as well as job placement resources and networking events.” 

4. Interdisciplinary collaboration

One of the most advantageous aspects of linguistics is that it is interdisciplinary in nature, spanning a wide variety of disciplines, topics, and domains. This allows linguists to make connections with, influence, and be influenced by, a diverse array of communities. The LSA prides itself on its collaboration with various external organizations and special interest groups. In addition to networking, professional development, and the exchange of information, the Annual Meeting also provides a venue to tangibly experience these alliances in action. 

For example, "This Annual Meeting represents important crossroads and transitions for the LSA, the discipline of linguistics, and for me as one representative element of both. In 2020, the LSA met concurrently with the American Dialect Society (ADS), American Name Society (ANS), North American Association for the History of the Language Sciences (NAAHoLS), North American Resarch Network in Historical Sociolinguistics (NARHiHS), Society for Computation in Linguistics (SCiL), Society for Pidgin and Creole Linguistics (SPCL), and the Society for the Study of Indigenous Languages of the Americas (SSILA), making it not only the target linguistics conference, but also an enormous collaborative effort for interdisciplinary research."

LSA Annual Meeting 2021

Presently, the 95th LSA Annual Meeting is scheduled for January 7-10, 2021, and will be held in San Francisco, CA. The call is currently open for Session Proposals, Poster and Paper Abstracts, and Abstracts for the Five-Minute Linguist. Find more information on details and deadlines here. Undergraduates and graduate students are highly encouraged to attend and join about 400 other students from across the globe in this meaningful and productive event. The LSA hosts about 50 student volunteers for the Annual Meeting in exchange for free registration.

A call for volunteers will be sent to LSA student members after the schedule for the meeting is set. This occurs in the fall prior to the annual meeting. 

Contact your campus rep!

The LSA Student Membership offers hundreds of perks including access to mentorship, work on committees, networking, professional development, fellowships, volunteering, Annual Meeting fee waivers, webinars, travel awards, & much more!

Curious to learn more? Check to see if your campus has an LSA Student Ambassador by contacting the LSA: 

• Tweet the LSA @LingSocAM, using the Hashtag #MyLSArep
• Email the LSA Student Ambassador Coordinator at lsa@lsadc.org. In the subject title, please put "My LSA Rep"
• If your campus does not have a student ambassador...
  • Perhaps consider applying to become one! 
  • We can connect you with another rep to ensure you are provided with all the materials you need and get all of your questions answered!

Who are the LSA Student Ambassadors?

Our student ambassadors represent a diverse group of scholars spanning multiple disciplines linked together by one common love, linguistics. The Linguistic Society of America Student Ambassadors are a direct reflection of the diversity and globally-oriented nature of the LSA. Below are comments from just a few of our ambassadors about what they study and why they chose to join the LSA. 

"I am a linguistics undergraduate student at the UNC, Argentina. Being part of the LSA and the Ambassador team is a great opportunity to connect with people who have the same interests as me all around the world and learn from them." - Teresa Borneo, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina

“I hold a BA in English Language and Literature from the University of Santiago de Compostela in Spain. During my undergraduate years I got interested in pragmatics and corpus-based research and moved to London where I completed an MA in English Linguistics at University College London. I am currently completing a PhD at the University of Santiago de Compostela (dissertation to be submitted soon!) where I carry out research on constructions introduced by markers of conditionality in English, French and Spanish in spoken discourse, from a functional-pragmatic and corpus-based perspective. Apart from research, I also do some teaching at my university, mostly on English for Specific Purposes courses (English for Criminologists, English for Audiovisual Communication, etc.). I have been involved in the past in student engagement: from 2016 to 2019 I was on the Executive Board of the Spanish Association for Young Linguists and participated in the editing of its journal Estudios Interlingüísticos. It's great to be part of the LSA Student Ambassadors team and help spread the word of the activities of the LSA!” - Cristina Lastres-López, University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain

"I'm a first-year PhD student in Spanish linguistics at the University of Toronto, and my areas of interest are syntax, semantics, and language acquisition. Before my current program, I completed an MA in linguistics and an MFA in Spanish creative writing at the University of Iowa. My first experience with the LSA was during the 2019 Linguistic Institute, followed by the 2020 Annual Meeting. The number of interesting people you meet is enough to make the LSA worth it, so I joined the Student Ambassador program to make sure other people find out about this opportunity. I hope to present at the next Annual Meeting and to attend next year's Linguistic Institute as well." - Samuel Jambrović, University of Toronto, Canada

“I am a Sociolinguist and PhD Candidate in Linguistics and Hispanic Linguistics, and certified in higher-ed pedagogy from Indiana University. I am a former LSA Intern, and have experience in linguistics both within academia teaching, research, editing, project management, event organization, administrative support, fundraising, student advising, study-abroad, grant writing, language documentation and revitalization fieldwork, and outside of academia as well, such as forensic language consulting. To read more about my experience and expertise, you can find me on LinkedIn.  I am currently the LSA Student Ambassadors Initiative architect and coordinator, which is motivated by the needs of our discipline and its people, for the greater good of the society world-wide (why not think big)". - Valentyna Filimonova, Indiana University, United States

“I study the historical morphosyntax and revitalization of Indigenous languages, particularly of the Yuman family. I also work with the Piipaash (Maricopa) community and their language revitalization program.” - John Powell, University of Arizona

"I am a first-year PhD Student in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at UC Davis studying Hispanic Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition. My research interests include computer-mediated communication, computer assisted language learning, and pedagogical applications of messaging apps and social media. Initially, I joined the LSA so I could attend the Linguistic Institute, not knowing how much either would change my life. I am excited about being a member of the LSA because of how it makes connections with so many different communities, disciplines, and fields. Linguistics is a part of everything humans do, and I love how the various efforts executed by LSA members, executives, sub-committees, and Special Interest Groups, support and make meaningful contributions to a variety of communities, both within and outside of academia. I applied to join the LSA Student Ambassador team because it helps us connect with students in various departments early on. I strongly believe that the field of Linguistics, the LSA, and now our Ambassador team can help bridge siloed departments, disconnected organizations, and promote an abundance of professional opportunities to students early on in their career." - Lillian Jones, University of California, Davs

For further inquiries regarding the LSA Student Ambassador Initiative we invite you to post your questions below or directly contact the 2019-2020 Student Ambassador Coordinator, Valentyna Filimonova, valefili@iu.edu, or the LSA Director of Membership and Meetings, David Robinson, drobinson@lsadc.org.

Are you an LSA student member? We invite you to share your thoughts, experiences, and questions in the comments below!