东密歇根大学

Linguistics is the scientific study of how languages are learned, processed, used and structured; it investigates why and how languages change, and what status they have in social life. Linguistics is important to social and cognitive psychology, native and foreign language teaching at all levels, artificial intelligence and computer science, communications, sociology and anthropology and historical accounts of human civilization. Linguists work in colleges and universities, in language instruction and educational planning, in the communications industries (including publishing), in translation services and in cross-cultural business and government agencies.

Students interested in practical applications of English linguistics are also advised to consult the Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages / TESOL [M.A.] program offered by the World Languages Department.

Degree Requirements: 30 hours

The M.A. in English Linguistics requires 30 hours of course work to be distributed among restricted elective courses and elective courses as follows. Students must complete those parts of the LING 401/LING 420/LING 425 sequence that were not a part of their undergraduate work. Graduate credit may be given for these courses. In addition, each candidate must complete a thesis (LING 692) or a comprehensive examination, including questions from general linguistics and specialized area(s) chosen by the candidate.

Linguistics Courses: 18 hours

Select six courses from the following.

LING 501 - Current Trends in Linguistics 3 hrs
LING 502 - History of Linguistics 3 hrs
LING 510 - Historical and Comparative Linguistics 3 hrs
LING 519 - Technology for Language Documentation 3 hrs
LING 525 - Syntactic Analysis 3 hrs
LING 531 - Semantics: The Study of Meaning 3 hrs
LING 532 - Sociolinguistics 3 hrs
LING 533 - General Psycholinguistics 3 hrs
LING 534 - Phonological Analysis 3 hrs
LING 535 - Discourse Analysis 3 hrs
LING 536 - Typology and Universals of Language 3 hrs
LING 538 - Multilingual Text Processing 3 hrs
LING 592 - Special Topics 3 hrs

Elective Courses: 12 hours

Thesis plan students will take three of these hours in LING 692 - Thesis. Suggested areas include anthropology, composition and rhetoric, linguistics courses not taken above, literature (particularly the early periods), mathematics, computer science, psychology, reading, sociology, speech and hearing science, and TESOL. With advisor’s approval.