Degrees Offered: Minor, B.A., M.A.

Why Study Linguistics?

Linguistics is the scientific study of language and is concerned with the following questions (among others): What does knowledge of a language consist in and how is this knowledge acquired and put to use? What are the similarities and differences among languages? How is language represented in the human brain? How does language differ from animal communications systems? How does language function in society? How and why does language change over time? In addition, linguistics is applied in the teaching of languages and in education generally, in computer programming, in advertising, and in many other areas of study and activity in which language plays a central role.

Program Information

The Linguistic Studies Program is an interdisciplinary program incorporating not only courses offered within the department of Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics -- prefixed 'LIN' -- but also courses from the following academic units: Anthropology, Child and Family Studies, Cognitive Science, Communications Sciences and Disorders, Communication and Rhetorical Studies, Computer and Information Science, Reading and Language Arts, Information Studies, Philosophy, and Spanish.

The Linguistic Studies Program offers a Major and a Minor at the undergraduate level and a Master of Arts at the graduate level.

The program also oversees an undergradaute minor in TESOL and a graduate-level Certificate of Advanced Studies in Language Teaching: TESOL/TLOTE