Leicester Adventure: ILinC 2012

Conferences are amazing. Where else do you get the opportunity to hang around with academics who share your interests and where you can listen to their monologues on these interests for full half hours? The fact that it means I have to do a presentation then as well is something I'll suffer through then - I'm not that hesitant to do the "half-hour-monologue on my interest", as you'll well know, but it's the whole standing up in front of a group and doing an academically sound monologue that scares me. But okay.

Conferences are also amazing because where else do you get so many opportunities for inspiration concentrated in only a handful of days? 

Where else do you have to keep defining yourself by your interests?

I was at a conference for the last two days. ILinC in Belfast. ILinC stands for Interdisciplinary Linguistics Conference, and though I'm not a Linguist I do like Linguists' conferences. But that is what helps you define the boundaries of your academic identity - going to conferences outside of your field, I mean. For example, I though I was simply a Criminologist. That's all fine, but what on earth are you doing at a Linguistics conference if you're a Criminologist?

"It's an interdisciplinary conference, innit?"

So I am a Criminologist, but my linguistics interests keep me from allowing myself to be defined by this larger field. I needed to find a part of Criminology that was compatible with interdisciplinary linguistics. Cultural Criminology? Yes. Certainly. After all, Cultural Criminology means sociolinguistics for criminal subcultures and critical discourse analysis etc. for media representation of crime. So I'm not a Criminologist, I'm a Cultural Criminologist. Cool.

Then the suggestion: "Have you ever thought of Forensic Linguistics?"

As a matter of fact, I had - but only because I've been more or less forced to. Yes, I have looked into it to maybe consider reading up on it, but the interest was never consolidated until this weekend, when I had a good chat with Paul Simpson on Forensic Linguistics. I might just end up doing a second master's in Forensic Linguistics, then, one day (interestingly, he also told me that if I do want to do the whole analyzing media representations of crime thing, I am indeed better off in Criminology than in Stylistics, which was very comforting to hear, I must say). 

So I guess I'm a Cultural Criminologist on the right Road of Trials.