BA English in Linguistics

The BA in English concentration in linguistics is theoretically oriented and provides a solid foundation in the major subfields of linguistics: phonology, syntax, and semantics. The concentration combines courses in linguistics with courses in some related areas of language study, such as teaching English as a second language, bilingual education, or foreign language teaching. This course of study is designed to prepare students for teaching in one of these fields or for doctoral work.

Most graduates teach language—they are ESL instructors at colleges, adult education programs, and in public school systems. Linguists are also employed in hospitals as speech and language therapists. They might hold positions in industry as computational linguists, dealing with language understanding by machines. Other career opportunities include automatic translation, speech recognition, and brand-name creation.