In Defense of the English Major

Dear Sir or Madam Future Employer,

In this period after undergraduate career, I have been removed from academia (and I plan on fixing that soon.) and spent time in working in retail to have some money in my wallet or my time on grand jury duty for legal reasons or time amongst family/friends, I have had one conversation multiple times, and it usually as follows:

“What did you major in?”
“English, with a minor in writing.”
“What do you plan on doing with that, teach?”
“Not right away, I want to get into editorial, publishing and maybe do journalism on the side.”

Then they look at me wondering why this bright young boy didn’t go into a (hard) science field, like most of his other friends. ‘Because I love words, telling stories, discussing language, reading’ is often not a good enough answer for them.

The problem is that American society is attached to the idea of a product, if not producing something, you at least work to produce some amount of money. In minds of many, non-liberal arts majors make product and enhance society. Liberal arts majors apprently do not. It all seems to boil down to the question: What do you [and my fellow English majors] do?

We do a lot. (Which is two words, thank you.)

          

But first, let’s dispel the notions of what most people believe English majors to be doing. Most of these ideas seem to be formulated on the line at the school bookstore. Other students with a few large textbooks that may or may not be outdated in a year see us English majors with a few books: some novels, some poetry, some non-fiction and probably one requisite Norton anthology. We are then promptly divided into two categories:

Those concentrating in Literature / Classics / Lit. Theory:  These majors read obscure novels and highly abstract theory, heads stuck eternally inside the pages of a book. They end up producing papers like:

The Vixen Angel: The Female Self in Contemporary Pop Songs (an excerpt)

In Christina Aguilera’s “Keeps Gettin’ Better” off of a greatest hits collection with the same name, she posits herself (or the speaker) as both a “super-bitch, up to [her] old tricks” (negative) and “super-girl out to save the world” (positive). Skipping over the Derridian deconstruction of the pairs and the connotations, she heads on to the rebuilding and reconstructs those meanings into a positive, perhaps feminist, self. Both ’super’-parts are part of speaker being, so anything that is done by either ’side’ should be loved as a whole construction. Besides it will only keep on getting better.

However, if you have ever want somebody to read and understand the fine print on something, look no further than someone who has climbed Mt. Althusser and survived.

Or creative writers, depicted as airy and vaugely artful, not doing much at all. Seemingly, they only produce nonsense poems like:

of sheets and of snow,
the coming months of ember
covered in the white

But aren’t nice and powerful words also the area of politicians these days? The words chosen speak multitudes about presidential and vice presidential candidates. Say one whose speeches may go down alongside JFK’s and one whose speeches resemble dadaist poetry (like a maverick, dontcha know?).

While some of these stereotypes might have some truth to them, English majors are involved with so much more than just literature and producing our own writing.

          

We are historians.

We do not just read novels, plays and poetry. We read all forms of texts. However the popular (or at least the surviving) literature of the time does say about a lot about how the people writing and reading it lived, thought about things, etc. Let’s not get started on the history of the novel itself.

But to return to historical texts: there are two types of college students who have read John Smith’s diary’s from is exploration of North American land. History majors learning about the history of what became the United States and English majors doing the same and probably looking it through the lens of post-colonial criticism. We come to appreciate other cultures through learning about the interactions of others and our own.

We are not only reading historical texts but things by authors that range from Karl Marx to Claude Lévi-Strauss. Text is one medium by which us humans communicate, and by reading and analyzing text is one of the best ways to understand how we operate and communicate as human beings.

So, we are amatuer cultural / linguistic anthropologists and sociologists.

If I really wanted to I can argue that–

We are amateur philosophers.

We read novels and poetry that may sometimes change whole perspective on the meaning of life. We try to write it all down in a vain attempt to translate the supposedly divine. We ponder the mysteries of life.

We are in the communications field as  journalists, PR people and advertisers.

In a more down to earth function, many English majors know how to research information and effectively analyze and report that information, they know the value of the written word and what a delicate balancing act word choice is when it comes to representing a brand, a product, a person.

We are artists.

Beyond the novels and the poems, we can do much more. We go into other mediums: art, music, film– We are screenwriters, playwrights, lyricists. Watch out for us multimedia artists.

We are editors.

No, seriously, it’s a lot. It’s two words. Also I used ‘it’s’ correctly. We know how to use the language, which is good because we use it very very often. Other people use it too, but not well. (Also note the usage good and well, because they are not as interchangeable as one might think.) 

We are educators.

You knew that though, it’s half of the English major population. Obviously we need people to teach people the fundamentals of the language, how to construct an argument, and to guide people how to express themselves effectively. Though they also borrow us for other fields such as American and Gender studies.

Basically, we are the providers of content.

You have a website? All coded and nice by a computer science major. Now what do want on it? We have the words. If you’re lucky you get someone like me who has some design background, HTML/Javascript skills already.

You want to know what’s going on in pop culture and what it all means? We’ve been taking apart Supernatural. (We’ve also been writing some odd fan-fiction but I’m not getting into that.)

And it’s not just us English majors who understand the power of studying and using the written word. There’s a reason why most of my (Public) Communication majors friends were also English minors. They have to provide context and understand the orgins of elements of popular culture. There’s a reason why art majors are pushed to write papers. They have to defend their art from subjective criticism and need explain why they did what they did and why it looks they way it does. Presentation is nothing without content.

          

So when you ask me what I (and my fellow English majors) can do, I would offer up the idea of asking me what else I can do outside of the things listed above to save some time.

I can do the Frug.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,
Alex T.
http://ajtunney.weebly.com