Talk to me about linguistics degrees please and best A levels to take ...

[expandabandband]

...because I know nothing.

DD is very interested in linguistics, and probably wants to take a combined degree with French. She's in Yr 11 and reading around the subject and intends to take part in the Linguistics Olympiad if she can persuade school (with many thanks to the MN poster who recommended that a year or so ago).

So I have two questions, or even three.

One is are there universities with particular strengths in this area?

Second is, she's particularly interested in historical linguistics rather than theoretical, does this change the recommendations?

Finally, she's planning on taking French and English Language A Levels plus either History, Philosophy or Politics. Would any of these be better than the other or is it pretty even?

Thank you!

UEA, Reading, Lancaster, Bangor and Manchester all used to have excellent reputations for linguistics, worth checking them out. Linguistics is the live long best, hope she finds a great course and loves it!

To add to @NoJuliana 's list, you really have to consider Birmingham. It's regarded as one of the best courses in the UK, and indeed the world. It's within the English department, which might obscure it. But it's at least as highly ranked as Lancaster's (the main Professor there at Lancs trained at Birmingham ...)

I'd say keep History of those A Levels. IT's the most analytical, essay based, thinking subject of the 3 - History requires the level of analytic abstract thinking as Philosophy, combined with a scrupulous interpretation of primary sources.

Add Edinburgh, UCL, Southampton, Warwick, York, Sheffield to that list. There can be elements of statistics to it, so don't discount Maths.

Cambridge and Queen Mary also have strong undergraduate courses. But look carefully at what's on offer, as there's a fair amount of variation - some courses are very "applied", others more "theoretical", others mixed. For historical linguistics a more theoretical course may be better.

The options increase if the student is willing to combine linguistics with another subject - e.g. Oxford is a good uni for linguistics but you need to do modern languages or philosophy/psychology as well.

The Cambridge course may be particularly good for historical linguistics; in addition to historical linguistics courses in every year there's lots of scope to take modules from other degrees, and look at the history of particular language families in more detail.

Admissions tutors are likely to care very strongly about the particularly A Levels chosen, and students come with a wide variety of different A Levels. Philosophy is the most likely of the three you mention to overlap with the course content, but that doesn't matter hugely. A good number of linguistics students have studied at least one science/maths subject to A Level.

Thanks everyone, this is a really good starting point.

DD is definitely looking to do it in combination with a MFL, but there is nothing on this earth that would make her take either a maths or science A Level and if there is a significant maths content she might reconsider. She probably has dyscalculia so struggles a bit in maths, but can do the Linguistics Olympiad papers fine, as long as they are not about a language counting in base 26...

I think I got away with using maths / stats precisely once throughout my five years studying linguistics :-) So i shouldn’t be too worried about that being part of it - at least not enough to put her off!

I don't have the knowledge to advise on uni but for her 'reading around' take a look at Nicaraguan Sign Language.

Nicaragua didn't have much of a D/deaf population but during the 1970/80s the USA embargoed Nicaragua, one consequence was that modern antibiotics were unavailable so older ones were used, but they had a side effect causing deafness.

A school for deaf children was set up, concentrating on teaching Spanish and lipreading, but the children used gesture and 'home' signs and developed a language of their own.

It is absolutely fascinating

I had a look at this area a short time ago. It looked like the A Levels offered were most often Eng Lang, Eng Lit, History and Psychology but she should really do what most interests her. Several places say Eng Lang is preferred/useful/helpful (Brighton compulsory) but beyond that it is quite a free choice so better to go for grades. However, Cambridge, Oxford, UCL (for their science route), Edinburgh, Newcastle all expressed a preference for Maths or a Science at A Level, Warwick will take Maths GCSE 6, so realistically she may want to avoid those as the course may be weighted in a way that appeals less to her (and presumably Uni's will be less likely to offer anyway).

But entry requirements can change any time, so don't take my word for it!

Essex was very good for linguistics 20 ish years ago. No idea what the department is like now, but worth looking into. There was a fair bit of statistics, data analysis etc, but the maths wasn’t to difficult. I did a stupid combination of a levels, but English language and psychology were the useful ones.

I've just graduated in a combined Literature Linguistics degree. I did English Language at A Level and had assumed it would be similar. My course content was very scientific/data analysis. Most of my papers required me to take data sets, analyse and present the results in a range of formats, calculate percentages, situate my data against data trends within the wider field etc.

Even for the more theoretical modules, the assessed portion would usually be one essay based component and one research paper and I would at least have a few tables and a graph in there. So there is always going to be some maths content, even for more theoretical aspects of linguistics.

We also covered lots of computer programme based study, so taking sounds waves and analysing them for various features, taking audio speech recordings and putting them through computer programmes so that we could produce transcripts to show discourse features etc so that's another thing to be aware of.

Lancaster came to mine immediately for linguistics.

@Saladian That's really useful thank you. She's currently heading for MFL + linguistics so might be able to swerve some of the maths aspects - this will be a dealbreaker for her.

@ShadowsShadowsShadows Would you mind saying which uni this was, or DM me as we can make sure it is not on the list...

Whereas @NoJuliana if you can say where you studied, it's going on the list...

@expandabandband it's small local uni so unlikely to be on your list, however the teaching staff have previously worked at Queen Mary and Essex and the programme of study is similar (they brought the material with them) so it may be a good reflection of linguistics degrees generally rather than being specific to this institution.

She's currently heading for MFL + linguistics so might be able to swerve some of the maths aspects - this will be a dealbreaker for her.

@expandabandband you can do some digging on each university website to find out the sorts of modules offered. Look for what are "core" or "compulsory" modules. These will give you an idea about the general approach of each degree programme. You need to get past the UCAS oriented advertising, to find areas of university websites where the information for current students is.

For example, here's the starting point link to Lancaster's Linguistics programme:

www.lancaster.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/courses/english-language-and-linguistics-ba-hons-qqc3/

If you dig a bit deeper, you can get details of course structure etc, or ask about these at an Open Day, or email the Admissions office and ask to be sent a course outline - or rather your DD should do all this!

Ooh how exciting!
I came to recommend Cambridge, the linguistics dept is still relatively new but really good. I took several modules combined with MML (French) and one of them was historical linguistics, it was fab. Also sociolinguistics is very interesting and there are good modules on that in the linguistics faculty. Outside of classes, the professors are super enthusiastic and there were always guest speakers and lecture series going on. I know we're 10+ years on but it's the same lecturers
In the French dept, there are a couple of linguistics modules specific to French too, especially on first year.

UEA! Disclaimer, was between 98-02, and then between 06-07, so a while back now.

Would you recommend Linguistics for someone who loves maths and modern languages, but is more scientific and has no particular interest in English, esp literature. I am aware most modern languages at university require a high degree of literature study.

Dd took 2 mfl, maths and biology at A level and enjoys the variety of her course. Has dipped into psychology, music and foreign cultural courses.

She would have taken English language AS level but her school dropped it due to lack of demand. It is unusual for that to be a prerequisite as relatively few offer it.

My friend did linguists at Lancaster. I think she did English language, classical civilisation, and I think politics at a level. This was a long time ago though.

Honestly OP if this sounds worrying - it isn't. We had to do elements of it for phonetics and linguistics on my SALT degree and actually it's really really bloody fascinating and the way you're walked through it - you DO suddenly get that moment where the penny drops and you're reading these outputs like witchcraft!

While most of my course feared linguistics and phonetics - I actually really really loved them as subjects!

DD graduated last yr, oxbridge, two mfl, Latin and maths a levels. Her degree didn’t need maths at all, and that stuff above about sound waves and data sets didn’t appear in any form in her degree, so your DD shouldn’t worry. Linguistics seems fascinating.