Linguistics
Offered at IU Bloomington by College of Arts and Sciences.
About
The Linguistics M.A. offers a high-level technical introduction to the range of fields in linguistics, covering both the core areas of analysis such as phonology, morphology, and syntax, but also extensions into related disciplines through phonetics, sociolinguistics, historical linguistics, and semantics.
In addition to providing this breadth of expertise in language, the M.A. program acts as an excellent platform for launching advanced research and teaching careers in language applications and teaching as well as linguistics.
The graduate program has strengths in areas of theoretical and descriptive linguistics and has a strong commitment to African linguistics. Approximately 70 graduate students from across the United States and the globe are currently working with the department, seeking M.A. or Ph.D. degrees.
Our linguistics faculty conduct leading research reflecting a wide variety of interests and excel in teaching and research in specific branches of linguistics, including linguistic analysis, language structure, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, computational linguistics, comparative linguistics, structural linguistics, and the linguistic study of African languages.
Linguists use an explicitly scientific methodology to deal with language as a particular cultural object. The discipline grew out of 19th-century roots, some examining the history and prehistory of well-studied languages, some seeking to understand the languages of the thousands of other communities encountered around the globe, and some aiming to understand the variation and socially important details used in the language of scholars themselves. All of these investigative threads share a common interest in languages as well as a dedication to developing a rigorous scientific methodology for studying them.