Linguistics

Linguistics is the scientific study of language in all its dimensions. It examines how languages are structured at the level of sounds, words, sentences, and meaning, how they are acquired by children, how they vary across communities and change over time, and how they function in social and cognitive life. It is a discipline that treats language as a natural phenomenon worthy of systematic investigation, and it connects to computer science, psychology, anthropology, philosophy, and neuroscience in ways that make it one of the most interdisciplinary fields in the humanities and sciences.

At the University of Edinburgh, linguistics is taught in one of the world's leading centres for the subject. Edinburgh has exceptional research strengths across the full range of the discipline, including phonetics and phonology, syntax, semantics, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, computational linguistics, and language acquisition. You will study all these core areas of the discipline, developing both theoretical understanding and the ability to apply linguistic methods to the analysis of real language data.

Edinburgh's multilingual environment and its strong research connections to language technology and cognitive science add particular richness to the programme.

This four-year, full-time programme includes a year abroad, giving you the opportunity to engage with linguistics or language in a different academic or cultural environment. That experience deepens your understanding of language variation and change in ways that complement your theoretical study. Graduates in linguistics go on to a wide range of careers, including speech and language therapy (with further training), language technology and natural language processing, publishing, education, translation and interpreting, the civil service, and academic research.

The analytical skills and attention to structure that linguistics develops are also valued in law, data science, and many other fields. Postgraduate study in linguistics, computational linguistics, or language acquisition is a natural route for graduates who wish to develop specialist expertise.