Bachelor of Arts in Linguistics

The Australian National University

Linguistics is the study of human language: how we use languages to communicate, how languages vary and change over time, how meanings are expressed, how children and adults acquire language, and how communication differs across communities. In this major, you will learn about branches of linguistics, including sound systems (phonetics and phonology), word and sentence structure (morphology and syntax), conversation and text structure (discourse), meaning (semantics), language use in society (sociolinguistics), language in education, health care and the law. You will carry out detailed analysis of linguistic data from a variety of languages, with a particular emphasis on the Indigenous languages of Australia and the Pacific region. The study of human language blends both scientific and humanistic approaches to building knowledge, and you will experience a wide range of analytic methods and theories. As language assumes ever greater importance in an interconnected, multilingual world, while remaining one of the last enigmatic frontiers for fields like natural language processing, the study of linguistics is relevant to an ever-wider range of career options.Learning Outcomesdemonstrate a depth and breadth of insight into the relationship between language, society and culture, and into the role of language in human socialitycarry out analysis of the linguistic systems of diverse languages, including the capacity for rigorous, in-depth analysis in at least two sub-disciplines of linguisticsuse a range of linguistic methods and theories to investigate how language is used in different contexts, and how it varies across people, places and times

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