One of the main themes of my doctoral thesis in linguistics is the notion that “to cognize is to categorize”. As humans, we have a tendency to identify, evaluate and categorize. And that’s a good thing. Categorizing the edge of a cliff as “Dangerous!” or putting our hand in the fire as “bad idea” is helpful and probably wise. If we meet a stranger and pick up in the cadences of a French accent, we might attempt a friendly, “Bonjour!”. However, our natural ability to categorize is sometimes skewed, and, in the absence of nuanced insights, downright harmful at times. What if Alex Honnold looked at the edge of a cliff and it only ever set off the “Danger!” category? Ok, some of you might think that’s actually not a bad idea. But, on the basis of experience, skill and opportunity, that cliff-edge also sets off his “Challenge!” and “Possibility!” categories, resulting in an incredible human feat that drops jaws in wonder and sets a few palms sweating (trust me, I’ve felt my husband’s).
So, why do I mention all of this. Well, with an undergrad in psychology and an (almost) PhD in linguistics, I’ve been immersed in the humanities and social sciences to a large extent. And having recently stepped into the realm of programming, I had previously thought that this was a hard-wired world of electrical signals hidden behind screens and immersed in a mysterious cloud that was very much out of my reach. Basically, not my field. Categorization: “Off-limits!”. But, when I realized that coding had a big role to play in the world of linguistics, in natural language processing and machine learning, I was intrigued. And when I wrote my first line of code and saw the words, “Hello World”, pop up, I was hooked.
Worlds collided, categories meshed together. In linguistic terms, coding versus the humanities suddenly seemed to be more prototypical than classical categories. Basically, the edges were fuzzy. I started to think of the possibilities. I was reminded that I loved logic; black and white, right and wrong, but I also loved beauty, romance, head in the cloud-ness (see, I can even make terrible programming puns now). I quickly saw that at my hands were logical tools that, when used wisely, could create things of great beauty, means by which people can be educated, cultures and languages can be preserved, and scattered families can communicate.
Categories can be helpful, but sometimes it’s good to have them collapse in on each other and create a beautiful unplanned soup (another coding pun, I’m getting good at this). And as I work on getting this new set of skills under my belt, I’m excited to see where this collision of worlds will take me.
Ciara Anderson, PhD 