Tina Chiles

A love for sociolinguistics propelled Tina through to a PhD in the subject and fostered research and analysis skills she uses in an advisory role with the NZDF.

I came to university after just over a decade of working and travelling. I did my BA in Linguistics at the University of Canterbury and came to Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington to do Honours because of the excellent reputation the University had for sociolinguistics. After Honours I did a postgraduate certificate in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), then a Master of Applied Linguistics and a PhD, all at Te Herenga Waka. I didn’t start out with the intention of studying to PhD level. I just enjoyed it so much and after each milestone thought ‘why not?’ to give the next one a go.

Initially, I took Linguistics after reading a book about the quirkiness of language. I was excited to find that it was actually possible to study Linguistics at university, something that seemed like so much fun. I chose it as my major mainly due to enjoying it so much, but also because at the time I had a vague idea of continuing to travel after study and I thought that Linguistics and an English teaching qualification would go well with travel.

I particularly enjoyed sociolinguistics, and really love that it’s such an accessible subject. We all communicate, and there are so many interesting features in the language we use that it’s a subject everyone can talk about on some level whether they’ve studied it or not. I loved that I could talk with my non-student friends about sociolinguistics and we could have interesting conversations about it; it wasn’t limited to the lofty heights of academia.

I gained a wide range of skills from my studies, and it was great to be able to do that while learning about something I found fascinating. While I didn’t end up following the English teaching route or anything directly to do with Linguistics, the skills that I gained were highly transferable.

It was postgraduate study in particular that really refined my research and analysis skills, and it’s those skills that enabled me to take on my current organisational research role. A sociolinguistics thesis allows you to consider qualitative data in a range of ways, rather than analysing numbers alone, and I’ve been able to apply these skills directly to the kind of data I work with now, which largely requires qualitative and descriptive analysis.

Even though there is a language-learning requirement to majoring in Linguistics, don’t let that scare you off if you don’t think you have a particular aptitude to learning languages. I have never managed to commit to another language beyond beginner level, but I have found that studying Linguistics has given me a greater understanding of other languages. The language-learning requirement is also a great help in getting to grips with linguistic concepts, so it’s a great benefit to give another language a go, even if you don’t end up being a fluent speaker.

Update: Tina currently works in the Organisational Research team at Te Ope Kātua o Aotearoa | New Zealand Defence Force in Wellington.