Academic
The Department of Linguistics & English at present offers two special degree undergraduate programmes, one in Linguistics and one in English Literature. Undergraduates who read for a BA General Degree and Special Degrees in other subjects may also take courses in Linguistics and English Literature offered by the Department every semester. The Department also offers undergraduate-level enhancement courses in French with the assistance of Visiting Lecturers.
Linguistics
Linguistics is a scientific, empirical as well as qualitative study of language. At present, this discipline covers a gamut of issues and topics which have language at its centre or involve language or one or more of its dimensions. They include the development of language as a product of the human mind, the acquisition of language by children, the changes language undergoes in the human mind, the structural evolution of languages and their dialects and varieties and the factors and forces that shape it, and the relationship between language on the one hand and entities like society, politics, economy, culture, identity, technology, the nation-state and globalization on the other.
The sub-fields of Linguistics taught by the Department of Linguistics & English at the University of Jaffna include Historical Linguistics, Second Language Acquisition, Sociolinguistics, Applied Linguistics, Language and South Asia, Language Policies, Translation and Computational Linguistics. Linguistics is an ever-evolving discipline which is informed by changes that happen in social, cultural, political and economic spheres and science and technology. The Linguistics curriculum taught by the Department is on par with the advances made in the discipline in Sri Lanka, South Asia and other parts of the world and reflective of the emerging cutting-edge, interdisciplinary research on and around language.
Table of Courses
English Literature
The English Literature curriculum taught by the Department of Linguistics & English at the University of Jaffna includes a wide array of courses in literary studies, language studies and courses that are interdisciplinary in nature where literary studies and language studies intersect with cultural studies and critical theory.
In keeping with the developments in the discipline of English studies in Sri Lanka and the rest of the world, the framing vision of the English Literature curriculum taught at the University of Jaffna is informed by inter-disciplinarity, diversity and social justice. Adopting a de-colonizing approach, the curriculum guides the students towards critically reflecting upon the discipline’s trafficking with colonialism in the past and present. It encourages the students to examine the ways in which writers from the margins and minority communities, women and queer writers, writers of color and writers from working class and oppressed caste communities disrupt the formation of various literary canons and find in literature an avenue to channel their protest and resistance to socio-political systems that marginalize them and their communities. Rather than frame English studies as a self-contained discipline, the curriculum invites the students to understand the relationship between English studies on the one hand and world literature, linguistics, cultural studies and critical theory.
In terms of content, the curriculum focuses not just on the British canon but also American literatures and literatures from formerly colonized locations such as South Asia, Africa and the Caribbean. The Department also teaches courses in world literatures and critical theory. Some of the Honours degree courses taught in the final year are organized around themes so as to give students an understanding of the ways in which literature engages with the questions of nationalism, globalization, gender, and sexuality, caste and labor.
The curriculum for the Honours degree program in English Literature includes several courses in Linguistics and Language Studies as well and cross-lists some of the courses offered by the Linguistics section of the Department of Linguistics & English. These courses will help students develop an understanding of the place and role of English in the local and global contexts in which they find themselves today. In order to help the graduates of this Department prepare themselves to make a constructive contribution to the teaching of English and English Literature in the country, the Department has decided to offer courses in Teaching English Literature too under its English Literature curriculum.