PhD in Linguistics: Theoretical and Applied Linguistics

University of Cambridge

The Linguistics Department is unique in the UK because it integrates theoretical and applied linguistics in a single academic unit. The Linguistics Department provides great variety and flexibility in course contents, subject-specific training, and diversity of intellectual interactions. PhD topics in the range of research specialisms represented in the Department and beyond the Department in the MMLL Faculty are accepted. Students may choose to focus on a theoretically oriented study of the language sciences (e.g., interest in the syntactic organisation or sound structure of different languages or in the analysis of meaning in semantics and pragmatics) but may also be interested in a more applied direction of Linguistics (e.g. language acquisition, language processing, data mining of language corpora) or may choose to look at Linguistics from a specific language point of view (e.g., Italian linguistics). In British universities, the PhD (Doctor of Philosophy) is traditionally awarded solely on the basis of a thesis, a substantial piece of writing that reports original research into a closely defined area of enquiry. Within linguistics, some PhD students may do most of their work in libraries, spend part of their time collecting and analysing fieldwork data, or carry out experiments in the phonetics laboratory or psycholinguistics laboratory. The completion of the PhD thesis is generally expected to take three to four years. It is also possible to take a part-time route, and the expected timeframe would be four to seven years. In addition to providing specialist supervision, the Linguistics Department and the MMLL Faculty run a programme of professional training for the benefit of all research students. The programme includes seminars and workshops on library resources, giving conference papers, publishing, applications and interviews, teaching skills, specialist linguistics training, and film-making. The School of Arts and Humanities runs a central programme covering a range of topics from PhD skills training, to language training and writing and editing skills. If you wish, you are likely to be given the opportunity to gain experience in small-group teaching from Colleges. There may also be opportunities to gain some experience in language teaching in the Faculty. In addition to providing special supervision, both the Linguistics Department and the MMLL Faculty run a programme of professional training for the benefit of all research students. The programme includes seminars and workshops on library resources, giving conference papers, publishing, applications and interviews, teaching skills, specialist linguistic training, and film-making. The University runs a central programme covering a range of topics from PhD research development to language training and writing and editing skills. Students also have access to a Social Sciences research methods training programme. If you wish, you are likely to be given the opportunity of gaining experience in small group teaching for colleges. There may also be opportunities to gain some experience in language teaching in the MMLL Faculty.

Linguistics