Michelle Mosher Morrison

Ph.D. Candidate in Linguistics

Rice University, Houston, TX

Primary interest in language documentation and how to make linguistic research available to speaker communities.

Intercultural Studies '05 Conc.: Linguistics / Minors: French, Missions, Bible

What have you done after college and what are you doing now (especially related to intercultural connections)?

I am currently finishing up my third year in a Ph.D. program in Linguistics at Rice University. I am getting ready to work full-time on my dissertation, which is going to be a reference grammar of a language called Kibena which is spoken by about 670,000 people in southern Tanzania. Current research on Kibena is very fragmentary and there is no usable grammar of the language. Members of the Bena people have requested that I come to Tanzania to write a grammar of their language. My primary interest is language documentation and I am very much interested in ways to make linguistic research available to speaker communities. The Bena people, for example, are interested in beginning to develop written materials in Kibena. I am hoping that the research I do on Kibena will be able to help make that a possibility and I will be working closely with members of the Bena community to ensure that the research I do will be usable for them.

What factors and influences have guided your path to this point in your career?

I went to Tanzania on a missions trip in high school—that's when I first got interested in linguistics. I chose to attend Houghton because of the opportunity to study Intercultural Studies and Linguistics. Throughout my time at Houghton, my passion for linguistics was strengthened. After I graduated from Houghton I began studies at Rice University. Linguistics is such a fascinating subject—it's amazing all the different ways languages are constructed— but my real reason for studying linguistics is a passion for people; language and people are so closely connected. I want to be able to use my training in linguistics to make a difference in the lives of the people I work with.

How did your studies and Houghton experience prepare you?

My studies at Houghton left me very well prepared for grad school. During my time at Houghton I spent four months living in a village in rural Thailand (an internship with SIL International) learning to speak a language without the aid of a dictionary, grammar, or learning materials. After that I went on the Houghton in Tanzania program where we studied Swahili, East African history, wildlife, and culture and where I had the fantastic opportunity to interact with Tanzanians. I also had the chance in Tanzania to do an independent study in linguistics. Several of the other students and I each worked with speakers from different languages to do some very basic language description and comparison. Those two experiences in Thailand and Tanzania gave me a bit of a taste of what doing linguistics in the "real world" is like. Once entering grad school, I found that my coursework at Houghton had prepared me well. I am very convinced that without my time at Houghton (both inside and outside the classroom), I wouldn't be where I am right now, preparing to conduct my dissertation research in Tanzania.

What advice can you give others interested in Intercultural Studies?

Spend time in the classroom studying and learning about cross-cultural communication, linguistics, anthropology, missions, or whatever else you're interested in, but then go somewhere and experience life somewhere else. There's nothing like experiential learning! Also, take advantage of your time in college to take classes outside your primary interest area—you never know when what you learn in those classes may come into play, and who knows? You may just find a new interest! Lastly, if you're interested in Intercultural Studies, take some courses in linguistics! Even if you're not primarily interested in linguistics, I've found that understanding something about the structure of languages and the way they work has helped me in studying foreign languages.

Contact Meara at: mmorrison@rice.edu