menu icon
Book your open day visit nowClick to book open day

Different course options

Full time | Goldsmiths, University of London | 1 year | 23-SEP-24

Study mode

Full time

Duration

1 year

Start date

23-SEP-24

Key information
DATA SOURCE : IDP Connect

Qualification type

MA - Master of Arts

Subject areas

Linguistics

Course type

Taught

Course Summary

This masters programme looks at language from a sociocultural perspective. It's designed for anyone with an interest in the relationship between language, culture and society but also provides a solid understanding of English language and linguistics.

Why study MA Sociocultural Linguistics at Goldsmiths?

  • This postgraduate degree focuses on (socio)linguistics and discourse analysis and enhances your analytic and linguistic skills by introducing different approaches to the analysis of written and spoken language from a range of everyday and institutional contexts.
  • You'll cover topics such as language and ideology, linguistic performances of identity (particularly language and gender, sexuality, ethnicity and social class), language and the media, talk at work, English in a multilingual world, intercultural communication, English as a Lingua Franca, multilingualism and code-switching, and attitudes to different varieties of English.
  • You'll be encouraged to engage with these topics by drawing on your own social, cultural and occupational backgrounds in class discussions and in your written work. The opportunity to explore new interests in written work, including the dissertation (dissertation), has allowed many of our students to forge new career trajectories, e.g. in internationalisation, diversity and inclusion, marketing, advertising, journalism, work for NGOs and many different educational contexts, including language teaching.
  • You will be encouraged to engage in hands-on analysis of spoken and written language, after receiving training in how to collect, transcribe and analyse different types of language data, in interviews, natural conversational context, and a various written texts and corpora.
  • You will learn how authentic spoken English is used as a resource by speakers to achieve their goals, signal intimacy or dislike, gossip or report, persuade or interview others, position themselves and their identities in different ways. You will learn how written English and other semiotic practices are used to report and to distort, create ingroups and outgroups, reflect and perpetuate ideologies in a variety of print and social media.
  • You'll draw on findings, theories and methodologies from across multiple disciplines, including sociocultural linguistics, pragmatics, discourse analysis, ethnography, semiotics, multimodal analysis, conversational analysis and narrative analysis.
  • The programme’s distinct interdisciplinary ethos is also reflected in your opportunity to choose one module from a selection of relevant option modules in other departments in Goldsmiths, including sociology, anthropology, media, politics, translation and literature.
  • We also run optional academic and research skills sessions throughout the year on reading and essay writing, conducting fieldwork, transcription, oral presentation skills, preparing for dissertation etc.

Careers

  • Publishing
  • Journalism
  • Internationalisation
  • British Council roles
  • Public relations
  • Teaching
  • Research
  • Translation
  • Advertising
  • The civil service
  • Business
  • Industry
  • The media

Modules

This course combines a sociolinguistic with a discourse analytic approach in order to explore the socio-cultural contextualisation of language and meaning from two angles: language use and language representation. This dual focus will be evident throughout the course; topics such as language and gender, language and ethnicity, language and social class or language and the media will be examined in relation to the socio-cultural (and situational) contexts in which speakers use language as well as in relation to different representations of specific socio-cultural groups in the media and other (written) texts. For example, we will investigate both how women speak and how women are spoken about (e.g. sexist language). Other topics that will be addressed in this course include the political correctness debate; attitudes to non-standard English; multicultural London English and the linguistic construction of identity. The course will introduce students to a wide range of empirical research and methodologies. Drawing on analytical tools and frameworks from semiotics, pragmatics, (critical) discourse analysis, conversation analysis, feminist linguistics, ethnography and variationist sociolinguistics, this course will investigate how language is used and meanings are created, interpreted and contested in a range of different texts, discourses and socio-cultural environments.
Dissertation

Tuition fees

UK fees
Course fees for UK students

For this course (per year)

£9,630

International fees
Course fees for EU and international students

For this course (per year)

£17,690

Entry requirements

Students should have (or expect to be awarded) an undergraduate degree of at least upper second class standard. Students might also be considered for some programmes if they aren’t a graduate or their degree is in an unrelated field, but have relevant experience and can show that students have the ability to work at postgraduate level.