The Linguist and Manpower Development in Nigeria

Abstract The role of linguist vis-a-vis manpower development in Nigeria is examined in this paper. A linguist is generally perceived as a good material only for classroom and encyclopedia of linguistic facts to consult. Against this backdrop, this paper apathy demonstrated that linguists can be gainfully employed outside the classroom and contribute to manpower development. The paper shows that linguists in Nigeria are engaged in areas such as documenting endangered languages, working in the field of law as forensic phoneticians, field of health as speech pathologist, creating reading machines for the blinds, developing and teaching our indigenous languages, serving as peace corps members, working internet and other business applications to mention but a few. The discussion in this paper will leave no one in doubt, concerning the contributions of the linguist in manpower development even outside the classroom.