ANNOTATED. episode 01: Nina Haket

Lydia Wiernik: Welcome to Annotated, the podcast of the Undergraduate Linguistics Association of Britain. I'm Lydia Wiernik, editor of JoULAB, and today I'll be speaking with Nina Haket, whose paper Language Contact and the Phylogeny and Phonology of Early English was published in Volume 1, Issue 1 of the journal. Our mission at JoULAB is to provide these same publishing opportunities for many more students to come. We hope that the behind-the-scenes insight from our authors helps demystify the process and encourages listeners to get their work out there. LW: Hi, Nina, it's so great to speak with you today. So let's start with a little more about you, past and present. Where were you when you had your paper published and where are you now? Nina Haket: When I was published, I just finished my undergrad at the University of Cambridge, so in linguistics, obviously. It was sort of during the pandemic and sort of the months after graduation where you're sat there not doing a lot. That's sort of where I was when I was published. But since then, I've also done a master's still in linguistics, but I went to the Netherlands to do that. And now I'm back in the University of Cambridge again doing a PhD in linguistics at the moment. LW: How did you find that, going from one to another and then back again? NH: Yeah, no, I really liked it because I am Dutch. My whole family is Dutch. I speak Dutch. I've lived in England for such a long time. I was like, you know what, it's nice for a change. Let's go back. Let's all go back to that side of your roots, family and everyone thing that still lives there as well. It was really nice to sort of leave the Cambridge bubble for a little while, do two years abroad somewhere else and then come back into afterwards. There's such a different perspective because the culture is very different there in terms of, again, work ethic is the wrong word, but just very different perspective on things there. LW: So we've covered this a bit, but what have you been up to since JoULAB? What kind of work are you doing now? NH: So I basically stuck with linguistics. It's where my heart lies. I've not been able to escape it this whole time, really. But I've gone sort of very different directions within linguistics. I'm sure we'll touch on it later, but my actual paper was about historical linguistics, Old English, Old Norse, those kinds of things. And I have done basically a 360 degree thing and I'm doing nothing to do with anything like that anymore. So I started very historical then when I was in the Netherlands, I started doing a lot more sociolinguistics-y kinds of things. And now I'm doing a PhD in semantics and pragmatics of all things that I didn't think I'd be doing. So that's one of the things that I like so much about linguistics, that it's so wide and varied, that there are so many little specialties that you can go into depending on your interests. And you can easily switch between them as well. There are things that I'm doing now in semantics, pragmatics, and I'm like, oh, I learned about that when I was doing historical, or, oh, that has overlap with sociolinguistics. It's really cool. LW: Do you find that your background in historical linguistics has influenced or had an influence on what you're doing now? NH: Definitely. My master's project was basically looking at words, meaning, change, diachronically over time. So between the 1600s and the 1900s, even then, it was just a lot of time on etymology dictionaries and looking at who used what word when for the first time, and all of that love is still just there from the historical linguistics side. And even now, I'm doing the same topic that I was doing in my master's, but from a semantics, pragmatics perspective rather than the social linguistics perspective. So it all overlaps and interweaves, and it's really satisfying when it also clicks into place, like, ah, yes, this makes sense now. LW: Did you know going into your degree that you wanted to at least start with historical linguistics? Or was that something that kind of developed as time went on? NH: It's not what I thought I would be doing at all. So like I said, I'm Dutch, my family's Dutch. And one of the reasons I wanted to do linguistics is that I found it really interesting how people spoke different languages. How did that affect people's brains when they did that first and second language acquisition? That's really what I thought I was going to be interested in. And after about the first year of my undergrad, that completely vanished, and I was not interested in that anymore. But we started doing a lot of, well, not a lot of, we had a single course that was very focused on history and varieties of English. We were learning about language contacts and pidgins, creoles, all those kinds of things. And all the examples from that that I found the most interesting were historical examples. So just sort of slowly without realising it, I very much veered in that direction. And then when I was choosing a topic for my undergrad dissertation, it was like, well, I have to do this basically. It's the only thing at the minute that I feel like this about. So it's really weird how you can be so set on one topic when you start and three years later, you're in a completely different direction. LW: You were the first author republished in the first ever issue of JoULAB. What was that like? NH: So I didn't actually know that I was going to be the first author of the first paper. I knew it was the first issue, but I didn't know because it was the first issue, there's nothing online to sort of look at and compare. So I didn't know how many people were going to be published. I thought in my head, oh, it's going to be like a normal, well, normal in quotation marks journal, but it's like 20 articles or something cool. It sounds good. And then when it was published, I went on the site to be like, oh, look, look, my name's on this. All of a sudden, I saw that it was the first one of, I think it was three or four, I think three in that issue. And I was like, I was so chuffed. I had no idea that that was the case at all. And then I opened it, I was like, it's cool, okay, solid. Yeah, it was really cool. I liked it a lot. LW: How did you hear about JoULAB to begin with? Were you involved with ULAB or other undergrad linguistics societies? NH: I think I heard about it from the departmental mailing list. I think the person in the MML department here in Cambridge just sent it out to all undergrads being like, hey, this is a thing. They're starting it up this year. It might be interesting to all of you who are submitting dissertations and things like that. And especially, like I said, it was during COVID time, we were all just kind of sat there not doing a lot. And I sort of read the email. I was like, yeah, you know what? I'll give it a shot. Never heard of the association. Didn't even know that that journal existed before I read that email and thought, yeah, you know what? Worst case scenario is they say no. And you know, I've not lost anything. And best case scenario, I get a publication out of it. So why not? All the other people that I've spoken to, I think a couple of people in years after me, I don't think I knew anybody in the same year as me that was applying. But I had a couple of friends in the year below when they said that they had sent the stuff in the next year. They kind of carried on the same attitude of just like, well, you know what? It's completely worth a shot. Nice to be part of this association, this group of people. And it's a really good way, especially to undergrads, I think. Just the word conference itself is really intimidating. You're just like, no, I'm a first, second, third year undergrad. No, I can't go to conferences. So I feel that this was a really good way of making it even more accessible than it was before. LW: So to go back a little, tell us a bit about your paper. What was it originally written for? NH: So it was originally my undergrad dissertation. And again, I kind of was focusing in on the historical linguistics side of things. And I discovered just through reading and things like that, while I was doing papers on it throughout the year, that I found Old English and Old Norse just really interesting. Because at that point, the languages were not particularly different yet. So that's the area where they've only just kind of split off. And there's loads of similarities. And it was very similar to me in terms of Dutch and English, which also, at one point, belonged to a common ancestor. And still sometimes you sort of see these commonalities. And I thought that was really, really cool. So I knew I wanted to do something along those lines. But then I was really stuck as to what. Because you can just be like, OK, I find these two languages interesting. And now what? That's still, it's 10,000 words. There's no way you can touch on anything. So I spent the summer just kind of reading through very casually stuff about that kind of thing. And eventually I found a paper, I think it was a book actually, by Emmonds and Farland, who were arguing in sort of the entirety of the book that Old English actually died out, and Middle English is just Old Norse, but with English words. And I remember reading that and being like, no, what on earth? What? And so it was that I was really, reacted to it really strongly. And then I just kept thinking about it for like weeks afterwards, being like, what? I don't understand how they came to this conclusion. And after a couple of weeks of still continuously thinking about it, I was like, this is it. I'm going to have to do my thesis on this because I can't leave this alone. No matter what else I read, I always end up coming back to that. So the whole premise of it was I was looking at that from a phonology point of view and seeing what would it have taken for these Old Norse words to map onto the English words? Because that's what they were saying, that they kind of just merged somehow. And sort of looking at the socio-historical landscape as well, whether enough Norsemen in England for that to even ever have been a possibility. And just sort of looking at all of these phonological rules that based on everything you know about phonology, there's no way it could have actually happened. So that was my conclusion, basically, to be like, no, it was an interesting suggestion, but no. I didn't really know what specifically at the start. So I worked with my supervisor to sort of narrow it down to sort of the phonology side of things that I went down eventually. But I just came into the start of the year with this very broad, basically, I just brought in this book to my supervisor was like, this is what I'm doing. Couldn't tell you what specifically, let's figure that out. But this, read it and tell me that I'm not insane for thinking that I don't agree with this. So I think it's also important just to sort of acknowledge that it doesn't matter if your idea or sort of obsession is broad, you know, narrowing it down always, always happens. And it's always fine. But just even that one theory, book, author, anything that you just can't stop thinking about it, that that's the right thing to write about. LW: Did you have to change or alter any part of your dissertation for JoULAB? Did you have to cut it a bit or did you just leave it kind of as it was? NH: I basically left it as it was. So it was already the right length for submission because our formatting guidelines were the same word count as the sort of word count for JoULAB. So that was that was great. But because I also got my feedback from my thesis before I submitted, I also worked in some of that feedback before I submitted it to the journal. So it's basically exactly the same as I submitted plus slash minus some of the examiner reviews that I had on it in the first round of marking. For me, it was mainly a few few changes here and there. And so a lot of just like, oh, the wording here isn't clear, or you've mentioned something very broadly here, sort of knowing that you and the person who's marking it knows what this is. But for general publication, you need you need to explain what this acronym means or what this theory actually means. It was mainly those kinds of things. So there wasn't anything big in terms of the argumentation or anything that I had to change, which I was quite happy with. That was kind of like bolstered me being like, OK, well, whatever, it is decent. Otherwise, the reviewers would have come back and been like, your conclusion makes no sense. Please rewrite it. LW: Did you find the review process helpful? Did the comments maybe provide some new insight or a different perspective than those your tutors or professors might have left on previous work? NH: Definitely. I think they were definitely accessible. They were definitely helpful. So actually, they've read the whole work. They know what you're trying to say, and especially since it's undergraduate work. Am I right in thinking that it's PhD students that are the reviewers? LW: Yeah. NH: So they obviously will know more than you [as the author] do. So in any case, the comments that they give are incredibly helpful. But it was also very intimidating because obviously with just essays or anything that you hand in just during your course, you know who's marking it. You kind of know, potentially depending on how well you know them, what they're going to agree with, what they're not going to agree with. You've probably submitted multiple things to them. So you really need to work on the things that they pointed out in the past. And then in this case, it was miscellaneous PhD students somewhere who I will never know the name of because obviously anonymous review who just could hate my work but could love it just depending on what their viewpoint is on things. So it was really daunting having that first experience of sending it off to somebody who you didn't know at all. But again, that's what happens in the academic field. The second you get to master's, PhD and above, that happens more and more frequently. So I think it was a good thing to sort of get exposed to that earlier rather than later when you get all these reviewer reviews through. And they're not always going to be kind. They're not always going to be like, your work is flawless. Don't change anything. So it's good to be exposed to that early. LW: Was that your first time submitting to a publication that had that kind of review process? NH: Yeah, it was my first time submitting to any kind of publication, review process or not. I was like, you know what, give it a go. LW: Did you feel that you had kind of a bit more confidence in that? You know, you've already done this before, especially at a younger stage of study, and that you're a bit more prepared for future publication and review. NH: Oh, definitely. Like at the minute, I haven't got. I've got a couple of articles that I'm writing now that will be sort of submitted. I'm just waiting for the deadlines and things like that. But I've done several conferences now where you have to submit abstracts, but then go through the whole peer review process. And especially the first time that I submitted one to a conference, I was a lot less nervous than I thought I would be at that point. I was just like, you know what, this is what I've written. If they like it, cool. If they don't like it, also cool. And I think that was influenced a lot by having done that earlier and not necessarily having that hanging over your head of just like these random people must like what I'm doing. Just having that experience helped so much. And also it's really weird now as a PhD student rather than as an undergrad. I thought that PhD students basically knew everything and were really academically gifted and knew exactly what the experts in their field. As a PhD student now, that's definitely not the case. Like if I was now given like an undergrad thesis to read as like a reviewer or something like that, I would be so impressed. I wouldn't necessarily be like, oh, their argumentation doesn't make sense. It's all fine. I would be so impressed. And I think it's really important to sort of remember that as well, especially for this journal in particular, that the reviewers are not out to get you at all. There are people that are at that point potentially two, three years ahead of you, not that much older, not that much more experienced. So it's not as intimidating as it originally seems. LW: So this is kind of a flip to the writing process. What did you find to be the hardest part about actually writing the paper, not necessarily editing or anything like that, but writing it to begin with? And then secondly, what advice would you have for others now that you've gotten kind of past that? NH: So for me personally, and I've always had this problem, and I still have this problem, I've not got rid of it, is I always tend to write before I have like a full argument. Because the way that I think and the way that I process, especially like links and solutions to things, is just by writing. Okay, well, this is the information I've got, let's just go. Write a stream of consciousness, see what I end up with. And a lot of the times, that ends up being something very descriptive, not particularly good, a bit windy here and there, doesn't actually link to the question, because you've gone off on a tangent somewhere. And it's what, 7,000 words of the words I meant, because you're just rambling on something, you're mainly just trying to explain it to yourself rather than actually add it to the argument that you're trying to make. And then I end up submitting that to people to review, and then every single time I get, well, as in like two supervisors and things like that, every time I get the comment, it's just like, did you think of a plan before you start writing this? Did you like properly think out, okay, this is what I'm trying to achieve, the evidence that I need to prove this or evaluate this is this, this, this and this, and therefore I will narrow down what I'm writing to this. Yeah, that for me was a challenge, especially with coming into it with a very broad idea of just, I want to prove that this book is not true. You could go so many directions. And at the beginning I did, it was not focused enough. But then eventually through a lot of patience on the behalf of my supervisor, and a lot of rereading and rewriting, I eventually got it streamlined and cut down to the word limit. And I'm still doing that now. Everything that I write is just streams of consciousness that are way over the word limit until I then go back and filter it and make it structured. But I've just gotten a lot better at doing that myself rather than sending it to supervisors and having them tell me that I have to do it. Before I do anything on my laptop now, I tend to try and get a piece of paper and just write down everything that could be even remotely relevant. And then you can sort of draw the arrows by, okay, well, this links to this, this kind of disproves this. And you still end up with a massive sort of stream of consciousness, but not necessarily in written format. And then I, at the minute, use that to go through and make paragraph headings or section headings. Okay, well, this bit is going to be about X. This bit will be about Y, because looking at this diagram, I know these are going to be the important things to touch on. So I have like a structure for all the paragraphs, then I go through and write it. Inevitably, it will still be rambly in places, but already slightly more streamlined than it was before. Then I usually try to just put it down for a couple of days over the weekend, do something else, go read some articles that are completely unrelated, and then go back to it, reading it as if you were reading it for the first time. If you are picking up a book out of the library, and that was the paragraph or argumentation that you were confronted with, would that be okay? Would you follow it? Would it prove what you're trying to show? So I think it's mainly just taking that step back and that depersonalisation, and just like, I'm going to pretend I didn't write this, and then see what I think. That's what I'm trying to do at the minute. Works better in some instances than others, still does. Especially if I don't fully understand the topic, I will just write pages and pages on it just to understand it. But that's helped me a lot at the moment. LW: You've already offered some really incredible advice and insight into what you kind of wish you'd known, or what you think undergrads should know now. But if you could condense it into kind of one thing, what would be that one thing that you would want undergrads to know about publishing their work? NH: Okay, so it's not really sort of related to anything that I've said so far, but I think sort of in a nutshell, if I was to condense it a lot, is just try and put aside your imposter syndrome. Because you're always going to feel like, oh, but I'm not good enough to publish in this journal. The work that I produce isn't good enough to be published. Like, I'm an undergrad. I can't compete with all these other people. Just try and put that aside. Just be like, you know what, I'm going to go for it. I am good enough to be doing this. This is specifically designed for people like me. Again, the worst that can happen is they say, no, I haven't lost or gained anything in that situation. So just put it aside and go for it. That would be my tip. LW: Thank you so much. So those were kind of all of the more formal questions that I had for you. Did you want to add anything or touch on anything else? NH: I think sort of one thing that I've learned a lot recently because of the work that I'm doing now is sort of very, again, interdisciplinary doesn't quite seem to cover it. But just basically what I'm doing now is half philosophy and half semantics, pragmatics, linguistics, kind of things. And I think from that experience of having to start reading and talking to people in other disciplines, I just found it so interesting that there's so much overlap between all these other areas that we don't really talk to that much. So just another sort of tip is a bit of a weird word, but just talk to your non-linguist friends, see what they're talking about, see if there's anything in what they're doing that would overlap with linguistics, because there's so much that we as linguists can learn and include in our own work and our own processes from other disciplines that we don't really talk to much at the moment, that I think that's something really worth looking into. And hopefully more, especially undergrads, will do it more in the future, because it's very sort of claustrophobic almost. You've got your linguistics classes with your linguistics friends and your linguistics discs that you're writing, which is important because you need to, well, get that training if you want to go any further. But just I'd say keep an open mind, just keep your ear out for things happening in psychology, or in philosophy, sociology, all these really cool things that are going on, language-related in these subjects, where if you actually start talking to them about it, you're like, oh, like that's, we learn about that as well, but we call it this, or we look at it from this lens instead. And I think that's so valuable, so valuable. LW: Thank you so much for speaking to me today, Nina. It's been really great to get your insight on publishing and your writing process and everything in between. Where can we keep in touch with you? Do you have a website or socials or anything else you'd like to plug or promote? NH: So I don't currently have a website. I should hopefully soon. That is one of the things I'm planning to do this summer. So you can always Google my name and see if it comes up, depending when you listen to this podcast. But you can find me on Twitter as well, just @NinaHaket. And yeah, my academic email, again, feel free to email with any questions there at the minute is nch35@cam.ac.uk, especially with publishing or questions like that, feel free to get in touch. LW: Thank you so much. Annotated is the podcast of the Undergraduate Linguistics Association of Britain. This series focuses on JoULAB, our journal and its authors. JoULAB is the world's only journal publishing solely undergraduate research in all areas of linguistics. We accept everything from squibs to write-ups to dissertations, as long as the bulk of the work was completed when you were an undergrad. You can still submit work you've done during your degree if you've graduated, as long as no more than three years have passed since you were an undergraduate. We're always looking for new submissions from undergraduates and PhD students to review that work. Interested? Find out more on our website, ulab.org.uk, or you can find us on Twitter and Instagram @ULAB_Journal. If you have any questions or want to get in touch, you can dm us or email us at ulabjournal@gmail.com.