Linguists

专业介绍

Linguists study language in its most general and fundamental sense. In our daily lives, we are surrounded by language, and linguists seek to understand how humans use sound, writing, sign and gesture to encode and convey meaning. They develop descriptions of and theories explaining the structure, use, and evolution of language, and they investigate language in its interpersonal and cultural contexts. Linguists conduct research on the cognitive, social and neurobiological processes involved in producing and understanding language; on the development of these processes in childhood; on clinical disruptions to these processes; on the historical and cultural processes involved in the evolution and use of language; on the role language and dialect play in society and cultural identity; and on the structural characteristics that distinguish the world’s languages. Increasingly, linguists also contribute to the development of language technologies such as speech recognition, machine translation, and automatic text parsing.

Collaboration, relevance and independence

On the linguistics MA, you will complete courses on linguistic theory, on language in use, on universals and typology, on experimental and statistical methods for studying language, and on computational methods (including programming). The MA also includes the opportunity to complete a project placement related to linguistics with an external organization, and to conduct your own research in a Masters thesis.   

Careers

Graduates with an MA degree in Linguistics have a well-defined, yet broad set of opportunities for finding employment and contributing to society. These opportunities can be grouped under three main career trajectories: Traditional language services, Social language services, and Computational language services (see below for examples).

To prepare students for work in these areas, the MA program includes courses on linguistic theory and practice, including courses on grammatical theory, interactional linguistics, typology, psycho/neurolinguistics, and computational linguistics. Students also complete a research topic, and gain real world experience by completing a project placement. The program concludes with a research thesis, in which students conduct independent research in a particular area within linguistics. In addition to working together with the thesis advisor, theses may also be completed in collaboration with an external organization.