On Minusta

First Submission: My academic career has not been one many would consider orthodox or regular. I graduated secondary school from a College-Prep Military Academy, Randolph-Macon in Front Royal, VA. In my final year I developed epilepsy, which intervened with aviation school. In the following summer, I was in a tragic auto collision that postponed undergraduate school by a semester. I was advised to attend Emory & Henry College. There I studied international relations and philosophy for two years. Because of my proficiency in different languages, I outsourced for another program to satisfy the specifications for my degree. Therefore I applied to Moscow State University (МГУ/MSU). For a year I attended their faculty of Foreign Languages and Area studies where I studied Russian and Finnish language. In my completion of their program I was formally invited by the faculty of Philology (Фил-Фак) to return for my PhD. Emory did not share my academic interests upon my return. I took a class at the University of Richmond and then transferred to George Mason University for the Master’s/ PhD program in Linguistics, in addition to tidying up my undergraduate work. My most recent proposed thesis is on Cross-lingual Semantics, values and markedness. I wish to pursue my higher education further in Helsinki, Tartu, or MSU.

One of the questions in online academia I have is on legitimacy and regulation of published work. It’s one thing to create a name and have your work on JSTOR…or Amazon. Having academic blogs is great for the principle of noting progress and sharing thought, especially to have roots and grounding. Intrinsic. For other permanence purposes, edited and formalised papers are done through online journals and databases.

However what I find unfortunate is marketing of these online pieces. The flow and ebb of income ‘ought’ to be in another way than the reader. Most articles are available online, so this is moot, *** it only damages the author to not have a popular demand if they charge to read their academic work.  I never plan to charge for my work. I plan to live my life dedicated to academia.  My love is for historical linguistics and the Baltic- Scandinavian region of nations focusing on the Finno- Ugric languages, while dipping into Russophilia.

A last little note reflecting on the articles.
People who choose their media outlets mark their social identity online and in outside social circles, cliques- just as anyone looks into another’s collection of apps on a phone. Pinterest, tumblr, twitter, snapchat, or Tinder. All apps carry a marked identity in their usage, and that varies per se with each nation of people.

For example, people genuinely go on walks and get tea on Tinder. Tourists use the app in order to find friendly guides. I speak for this example.

Since mass media has made unforeseen strides in efficiency, depth and scope, the varieties of language have also developed and changed! Identity of a person is noted based on their attention to a prescripted variety of a language. This includes phonetic speech, dissention of grammar and punctuation, and the inclusion of symbolic speech- idiographic. More and more this is accepted and developing ideas across different languages.

• Miriam Posner, Stewart Varner, and Brian Coxall, “Creating Your Web Presence,” ProfHacker, February 14, 2011.
• Ryan Cordell, “Creating and Maintaining a Professional Presence Online,” ProfHacker, October 3, 2012.