Program Overview

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We offer supervision for our PhD Sociolinguistics in the areas of: conversation analysis, language variation and change, dialects and language contact, gender differentiation in language, multilingualism, intercultural pragmatics, language maintenance and shift, Pidgin and Creole linguistics, and language and human rights. Examples of PhD projects which our students have undertaken include studies of the consequences of language contact between Arabic and Cypriot Greek, dialect contact and acquisition of American children in British schools, responses to different types of announcements, and linguistic resources to express agreement. Many of our former PhD students work in higher education institutions around the world, as teachers and/or as academic researchers. Other career paths our former PhD students have taken include publishing, social work, administration, and retail. We also offer an MPhil in this subject Please note, part-time research study is also available. Why we're great.

• We are 1st in UK for research impact in modern languages and linguistics (Grade Point Average, Research Excellence Framework 2021).
• Our students are taught, supported and supervised by staff with an international reputation for being at the forefront of research in their areas of expertise.
• We have a strong research group culture and run regular departmental seminars which feature invited external speakers.

Our expert staff

Within our Department of Language and Linguistics, you will be allocated a supervisor whose role it is to guide you through the different stages of your research degree. In some cases, you may have joint supervision by two members of our staff. The support provided by your supervisor is a key feature of your research student experience and you will have regular one-to-one meetings to discuss progress on your research. Initially, your supervisor will help you develop your research topic and plan. Twice a year, you will have a supervisory board meeting, which provides a more formal opportunity to discuss your progress and agree your plans for the next six months.

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Specialist facilities

Within the Department of Language and Linguistics, we aim to provide our research students with work and storage space, including laboratory facilities and access to online bibliographies, corpora and other resources. The University of Essex has excellent library holdings in all areas of linguistics, with online access to many periodicals and resources. We have open access computing labs running many software packages that our research students need in their work.

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Your future

Given the breadth of our provision within the Department of Language and Linguistics, career prospects for our graduates vary depending on the study undertaken. Often the career destination of our PhD students is university lecturing or research. Given the interdisciplinary nature of the areas of linguistics we cover, this could be in departments of English, linguistics, education, sociology or cognitive science.