PhD Sociolinguistics

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.

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.