What can you do with a social science degree? Carrie Brownstein has been a rockstar with Sleater Kinney and has found further success as a comedy writer and star on Portlandia. Here’s how she sees the link between her degree in sociolinguistics and her comedy TV show.

‘With sociolinguistics, after covering the basics of the field, I focused on discourse analysis. At the time it was generally called computer mediated discourse, which actually is very popular now — people are often discussing how linguistic shifts occurred on account of technology, and the way we communicate via text message, in chat rooms, on Tumblr. It feels very current.

‘At the time, it was very fascinating to me how people found communities to gather around, and then created a register of speaking that informed the context and was an identifier of who they were — and how through language they could build up a persona, a community and a sense of self. And differentiate themselves from other communities.

‘Of course, “Portlandia” is all about ways that people curate their physical space and their life. So yes, I see a lot of threads between what I used to do and what I do now.’

Source: Salon.