Introduction to the Language and Linguistic Science Department

You are now a member of the Department of Language and Linguistics Science. As you may be aware, our department is one of the leading centres in the UK for teaching and research in theoretical and empirical linguistics. We are one of the few departments in the country to combine the study of modern languages with linguistic study, allowing us to offer a variety of combinations of languages and linguistics in our BA degrees. Our degrees provide our students with a variety of practical and analytical skills which have significant value in the modern world. We are committed to language and linguistics teaching of the highest quality, offering a wide range of content-based modules across our different degree programmes.

Our several broad research groupings are in syntax and semantics, phonetics and phonology, forensic speech science, language variation and language change, first and second language acquisition, and the analysis of conversation and interaction. In the 2014 Research Excellence Framework, we ranked 2nd among linguistics departments in the UK for the proportion of our research rated as world-leading.

The department includes over 500 people: academic staff involved in teaching and research, support staff and students.

Academic staff may have the title Professor, Reader or Lecturer. They are leaders in their fields and engaged in teaching and research. Most will supervise research students and some also hold certain key administrative roles within the Department.

Research staff are members of staff employed to conduct research projects within their field of expertise. They may not be involved in teaching or supervision, instead concentrating on their research projects.

Support staff make the department run smoothly. They communicate important information, provide technical assistance and help signpost you to other services and support you might need within the University.

Students work at a range of different levels on a range of different courses. You are joining a cohort of over 50 research students, but the student community in our department also includes “taught masters” students on several different linguistics courses, and around 400 undergraduates studying linguistics and languages in varying combinations. Our PGR students are mainly part of the research environment of the department, but those who become Graduate Teaching Assistants (“GTAs”) contribute to teaching and tutoring on all of our linguistics-based degree programmes.