PhD in Linguistics

Our specific areas of interest are: syntax, semantics, morphology and prosody; phonology; tone and intonation; the structure of spoken language; dialect syntax; and sociolinguistics – including variationist, interactional, discourse-analytic, and field-based approaches, ethnography of communication, sociology of language, language and media, language and gender, language attitudes, language planning, multilingualism, endangered languages, dialect contact and historical linguistics. The Department works closely with other linguists in the School of Languages, Linguistics and Film, who have specific interests in French, German and Hispanic languages, and research students benefit from this range of expertise. We have a lively programme of seminars and reading groups and a series of invited guest lectures. Graduate students have access to the major academic libraries and resources in London, in addition to our own study facilities. The Department has a new linguistics laboratory and recording studio. The laboratory is fully stocked with state-of-the-art recording and transcribing equipment, a comprehensive range of public corpora and software for analysing language and workstations for graduate students and research fellows.

Research areas Our specific areas of interest are: syntax, semantics, morphology and prosody; phonology; tone and intonation; the structure of spoken language; dialect syntax; and sociolinguistics – including variationist, interactional, discourse-analytic, and fieldbased approaches, ethnography of communication, sociology of language, language and media, language and gender, language attitudes, language planning, multilingualism, endangered languages, dialect contact and historical linguistics. The Department works closely with other linguists in the School of Languages, Linguistics and Film, who have specific interests in French, German and Hispanic languages (see pages 77-80), and research students benefit from this range of expertise. We have a lively programme of seminars and reading groups and a series of invited guest lectures. Graduate students have access to the major academic libraries and resources in London, in addition to our own study facilities. The Department has a new linguistics laboratory and recording studio. The laboratory is fully stocked with state-of-the-art recording and transcribing equipment, a comprehensive range of public corpora and software for analysing language and work-stations for graduate students and research fellows.