I am a student of linguistics in a Bachelor of Arts program. What jobs can will I qualify for after graduation?

Kimberly,

If you're interested in working in technology, a degree in linguistics can be helpful in a number of ways! As it happens, programmers come from a variety of backgrounds (my coworkers have degrees in a number of fields, very few of them computer science, including math, physics, general liberal arts, and linguistics). A bachelor's degree is often useful not just for a set of facts learned about a field, but for helping you learn how to approach problems, and jobs in technology are often very much about knowing how to approach a problem.

But beyond that, there's a lot of interesting work being done at the intersection of linguistics and computer science. There are a lot of companies that work to parse text into information, sometimes using statistics and other mathematical approaches, and sometimes using an understanding of syntax and semantics. Text-to-speech and speech-to-text technologies certainly rely on knowledge of phonology and phonetics. So if you have a linguistics degree and are interested in working in technology, there's a very good chance that you can find a job in natural language processing of some sort.

And definitely talk to someone in your department! Most departments have undergraduate advisors, and they may be in the best position to know about finding jobs that use your degree. That's especially true if you're near a tech-heavy city like San Francisco or Boston.

I hope this helps--let me know if there's anything else I can tell you!

Hi Kimberly!

The application of the degree is very broad. The best thing that you can do is to talk to the head of alumni relations at your school to arrange to meet, visit, and talk to graduates of that program to see what they are doing, how they got there, and how you feel about it. Such networking will allow you to see the inside of the application of the degree.

Here is the site of an interesting organization. Perhaps they have a unit near you. This group would be great for networking:
http://www.linguisticsociety.org/content/why-major-linguistics

This might also help:
http://www.internationalstudent.com/study-languages-and-linguistics/is-a-degree-in-linguistics-right-for-you/

Best of luck! Please keep me informed. I would like to follow your progress!