English Language and Linguistics with Year Abroad

English language and linguistics is the scientific study of language as a system and as a social practice. It examines how the English language is structured, how it has changed over time, how it varies across communities and around the world, and what those variations reveal about culture, identity, and power. Unlike literature degrees that focus primarily on canonical texts, linguistics takes language itself as its object, asking systematic questions about phonetics and phonology, morphology and syntax, semantics and pragmatics, and the social, cognitive, and historical dimensions of how English is used and understood.

At the University of Southampton, this four-year programme explores the rich history of the English language and its diversity across different societies. You will develop an understanding of how modern English works across its structural levels while also engaging with the history of the language, from Old English through the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period to the present. You will study variation across dialects and world Englishes, examine how language is used in social interaction, and develop the research skills to investigate language systematically using both quantitative and qualitative methods.

The programme includes a year abroad, which is built into the four-year structure, giving you the opportunity to engage with English language use in a different national and cultural context, enriching your comparative understanding of how the language varies and functions across its global communities of speakers.

Graduates from English language and linguistics degrees pursue careers in teaching, language therapy support, publishing and editing, communications, journalism, data analytics involving language and text, and the civil service. The analytical and research skills developed through linguistics are highly transferable. Many graduates also go on to postgraduate study in linguistics, applied linguistics, speech and language therapy, computational linguistics, or related fields.