English Language and Linguistics

Gain a broad range of skills useful for the collection, analysis and presentation of language data. Topics covered will include: the nature of behavioural and corpus data, principles of data collection, introduction to quantitative and qualitative analysis; ethical considerations in data collection.

An exciting opportunity to develop an individual project in a topic of your choice, under the expert guidance of your supervisor.

Expand your creative, analytical, critical, and organisational skills through the creation and completion of an independent project within a supportive learning environment. By means of a series of enriching and stimulating workshops, lectures, and supervisory meetings, you’ll be equipped with the methods and training required to succeed in creating an independent project. The project will not only expand your intellectual horizons as a student, but also prepare you for future careers through the transferable skills and personal development you’ll gain as a result.

You’ll benefit from structured learning progression that includes: formulating a proposal in consultation with your supervisor, delivering a mini-presentation on your proposed topic in a friendly student environment, and culminating in the final submission of your project, showcasing your journey as an independent and accomplished learner.

Track the linguistic development of neurotypical children from birth to four years of age. Stages of development covered will include: babbling; segmentation, categorisation and mapping; one-word utterances; two-word utterances, grammatical morphemes; negation and question formation. With the child’s linguistic trajectory in place, you'll assess the extent to which different theoretical approaches can account for the acquisition patterns they have observed.

Are you considering a career in publishing? Gain an introduction to the nuts-and-bolts of the publishing process in a supportive and intellectually stimulating academic environment. Skills gained range from proofreading, editing, marketing, and other useful techniques taught in conversation with comparative and world literature methods. Workshops featuring guest speakers (professionals, as well as alumni) sharing their knowledge, expertise, and personal journeys in the world of publishing are an important component of the module. The assessment gives you the opportunity to design their own independent project with the guidance of an academic supervisor. Projects may range from creating your own blog, magazine, and book series to writing book reviews and fiction and non-fiction blurbs.

Switch roles from sitting behind the desk to standing in front of a class, as you're introduced to the complexity of language learning and teaching. You'll develop other transferable skills such as public speaking, writing objectives and assessing outcomes, creating pedagogical materials, evaluating and analysing methodology, and synthesising linguistic knowledge into a creative application.  

You'll explore different aspects of language pedagogy, language acquisition, general education and classroom practice. You'll apply theoretical aspects of language teaching and planning in the implementation of a lesson, as well as evaluative skills applied in the formal assessment of a speaker’s level. You'll be introduced to proficiency scales including, but not limited to, CEFR and ACTFL, and will discuss and evaluate language proficiency descriptors.

With a focused teaching practice, you'll use the practical and theoretical knowledge gained in class to conduct short mini-lesson practices in groups. This includes writing and crafting learning objectives and structuring an effective a lesson plan. Take the opportunity to experience what it takes to be on the other side of the classroom.

In this module, students will develop their knowledge and skills in two related areas of formal linguistics: morphology and syntax. They will gain an understanding of the role of morphology and syntax as core components of human language, and how they relate to other components such as phonology and semantics. 

Focusing on the structure of words, phrases and sentences, the module will examine the principles according to which these structures are formed, as well as speakers’ knowledge about the well-formedness of utterances they hear and produce. Students will build a toolkit of terminology with which to describe morphological and syntactic processes and understand how to represent linguistic structure using specific morphological and syntactic diagrams and formalisms.  

Students will also develop tools for pattern observation in data, description and analysis of word and sentence structure, and hypothesis testing. They will learn to conduct diagnostic tests on English and cross-linguistic data, thereby becoming versed with the empirical method. 

In this module students will be given the opportunity to gain experience in guided research, contributing to projects run by members of academic staff, under their supervision.  The research project will normally be relevant to a module that the student has taken or is currently taking.  

At the beginning of the term, students will meet with the module convenor, who will recommend a project that is suitable to their interests. Assigned work may contribute to ongoing or one-off projects reflecting the research interests of members of staff, including research related to PhD projects under the supervision of a member of staff. 

During the course of this module, students will have to complete research tasks set by their supervisor. Students will meet with the supervisor at agreed intervals, in order to set a timetable for the completion of each task. Through these meetings, they will also receive advice and feedback on the progress of their research. Students will keep a log on the research process, which will be monitored by the supervisor. After having successfully completed the set research tasks, students will also write a report on the conducted research, demonstrating both their general understanding of the research process and their specific understanding of the project and the area of linguistic analysis that it belongs to. 

An extended, independent project on a topic determined by you in consultation with the module convenor and project supervisor which builds on all your gained knowledge and skills.

You'll write a proposal for their project and are assigned a supervisor accordingly. You'll be led through the development of your project by a combination of one-to-one supervisions, and a series of lectures and workshops designed to hone the ideas and skills tyou need to fulfil your project. During the development of the project, you'll submit plans and literature reviews, and offer a presentation on your work as it progresses.

The Final Year Project presents a chance to devote a sustained period of time to an area for which students feel enthusiasm, curiosity, and passion. You'll focus on an in-depth scrutiny of a subject through primary and secondary research and writing.  You have the opportunity to put the research skills and training developed earlier in their degree into practice and will gain transferable skills such as organisation, independence and project management.

Compare the language skills of neurotypical individuals with individuals who have social, cognitive, linguistic or physical differences that impact upon their language development. Because of a different or delayed developmental path, these individuals may process language in diverse ways or have non-typical linguistic representations. You'll examine behavioural data (comprehension and production) in phonological, morphological, syntactic and pragmatic domains, learning how to relate these data to the profiles of the individuals concerned. Critical cases will include a selection from the following: profoundly Deaf individuals, individuals with official diagnoses (e.g. Down Syndrome; Autism; Developmental Language Disorder), neurotypical children and adults. These cases will provide the backdrop against which students can consider key theories and debates in the psychology of language.

Explore interdisciplinary approaches (relevant disciplines: linguistics, anthropology, sociology, philosophy) to the notion of 'culture' and 'intercultural communication', with a special focus on concepts and methodologies from the areas of Pragmatics, Sociolinguistics, and Discourse Analysis. You'll cover phenomena such as indexicality, (im)politeness, humour, non-literal language, miscommunication, while also discussing a range of discourse contexts (classroom, healthcare, business, media).

You are encouraged to reflect critically upon the definition of culture, linking it to identity, social variables and, of course, language and communication. The module’s scope is not limited to examining instances of communication between members of different linguistic communities (or national cultures), but also expands to any communicative event where participants’ varied backgrounds and cultural identities come into play.

We'll provide you with a methodological toolkit that allows you to analyse and dissect the intricacies of any communicative event. You'll learn the principles of Conversation Analysis, as well as working with a sociolinguistic model of analysis (Hymes’ SPEAKING model).

The two assessments for this module are aimed at enhancing your analytical skills, research skills, reporting and academic writing. The Fieldnotes assignment encourages you to carry out a systematic collection and recording of spontaneous interactions in intercultural environments, while the Case Study assignment builds on you previous data collection and allows you to gain experience in writing in the style and format of an academic paper.

Explore bilingualism and multilingualism from linguistic, social and cognitive perspectives. You'll consider contemporary definitions of bilingualism and multilingualism; the critical roles of age and type of exposure in second or third language acquisition; the social and cognitive consequences of multilingualism; the phenomena of language transfer and code-switching and what each tell us about second language processing and lexical representations; the multilingual brain. Past and current theories of multilingualism will be introduced and critiqued throughout the discussion of these key topics.

Build on the idea that writing creatively entails an interest in the ‘expressive mechanics’ of language. A more in-depth understanding of this will benefit your writing in many ways, for example by giving you a precise taxonomy with which to describe fictional, poetic and dramatic techniques and aiding critical reflection on creative practice.

The module is designed to appeal not just to those with an interest in writing, but to anyone who would like to explore further and in a ‘hands on’ fashion the insights into the expressive functions of language and literature offered by stylistics. SYou'll be ‘doing stylistics’ in the broadest sense of that phrase.

You're introduced to various stylistic and narratological topics (e.g. linguistic deviation, deixis, cognitive poetics, focalization, ways of representing thought/speech, and metaphor) produce creative exercises which implement and explore them. Various ‘input’ texts (poetry, fiction and drama) will also be used as examples of the techniques and concepts under discussion, and some as the basis for textual intervention exercises (critical-creative rewriting). Students then produce a portfolio of creative work (which may be one or more complete stories, a selection of poems, a dramatic text, or a mixture), accompanied by a stylistics-informed critical reflection on practice.