faculty
Maite Taboada elected to Royal Galician Academy of Science
Congratulations to Distinguished Professor Maite Taboada on her admission into the Royal Galician Academy of Science. The Academy works to advance scientific culture, foster independent research, serve as an official advisory body for public and private institutions, and support the social and economic development of the Galician region of Spain. Professor Taboada’s entrance into the highly prestigious Academy is a landmark career milestone.
Professor Taboada is very gratified to be admitted to the Academy. “Being elected as External Member of the Royal Galician Academy of Science is an honour. Entering any Academy is a recognition by colleagues, other Academics, of my work. This being the Galician Academy means a lot, because my parents are both from this region of Spain, and because I have had a long academic collaboration with colleagues at the Universidade de Santiago de Compostela in Galicia. Additionally, a linguist being elected to an Academy of Science is an appreciation of Linguistics as the scientific study of language.”
During the admission proceedings, Professor Taboada presented her inaugural address titled Linguistics is everything: Science, technology, humanities, and social sciences. She discussed the interdisciplinary nature of Linguistics. “Linguistics is a scientific discipline because it follows the scientific method, but it also can be considered part of humanities and social sciences. Quoting Victoria Escandell Vidal, I argue that Linguistics is the most humanistic of all the sciences and the most scientific of all the humanities.”
Professor Taboada’s talk focused on language technology. “Surveying how my field of computational linguistics has changed over the years, I explained that it has evolved from a scientific endeavour, with hypotheses and experiments, towards engineering and technology. Today, unfortunately, language technology is a form of engineering that does not guarantee solid infrastructure, as we can see from the unpredictable nature of modern large language models.”
Taboada’s Discourse Processing Lab studies discourse from linguistic and computational points of view. Her research examines and empirically tests the role of discourse structure in different areas of language. In past work, the lab focused on verbal conversations (coherence, genre, turn-taking), whereas today the lab largely conducts research on text. Current projects involve computational analysis of opinion (sentiment analysis) and studies of rhetorical/coherence relations.
Upon achieving this milestone, Professor Taboada reflects on the role of teamwork during her career thus far. “This year, I celebrate 25 years at Simon Fraser University, during which I have maintained strong collaborations in Spain. Many colleagues with whom I have worked there attended the ceremony, during which I also highlighted the team aspect of my research program.”
The Department of Linguistics is incredibly proud of Professor Maite Taboada, and we look forward to celebrating her accomplishments for many years to come.