MA Linguistics

For entry in the academic year beginning September 2026, the tuition fees are as follows:

• MA (full-time)
  UK students (per annum): £13,700
  International, including EU, students (per annum): £29,900
• MA (part-time)
  UK students (per annum): £6,850
  International, including EU, students (per annum): £14,950

Further information for EU students can be found on our dedicated EU page.

The fees quoted above will be fully inclusive for the course tuition, administration and computational costs during your studies.

All fees for entry will be subject to yearly review and incremental rises per annum are also likely over the duration of courses lasting more than a year for UK/EU students (fees are typically fixed for International students, for the course duration at the year of entry). For general fees information please visit: postgraduate fees . Always contact the department if you are unsure which fee applies to your qualification award and method of attendance.

Self-funded international applicants for this course will be required to pay a deposit of £1000 towards their tuition fees before a confirmation of acceptance for studies (CAS) is issued. This deposit will only be refunded if immigration permission is refused. We will notify you about how and when to make this payment.

All students should normally be able to complete their programme of study without incurring additional study costs over and above the tuition fee for that programme. Any unavoidable additional compulsory costs totalling more than 1% of the annual home undergraduate fee per annum, regardless of whether the programme in question is undergraduate or postgraduate taught, will be made clear to you at the point of application. Further information can be found in the University's Policy on additional costs incurred by students on undergraduate and postgraduate taught programmes (PDF document, 91KB).

• Information on university funding, loans, and scholarships available on the Masters student funding page
• The Faculty of Humanities offered a range of scholarship opportunities for eligible applicants starting in September 2025. Please check back to confirm availability for September 2026 start.
• Please visit the school funding page for more information on subject funding available
• Other funding for EU and international students is on our country-specific pages

This course is designed to equip students with advanced skills in conducting and presenting linguistic research. It covers the ethical issues in working with and managing data from human subjects, and strategies of presenting and writing up linguistic research. In particular, three lectures will address the technical aspects of planning a dissertation project, writing a research proposal, and oral dissemination of dissertation research.

The unit aims to:

• equip students with the relevant skills for designing a research project compliant with ethical guidelines, and to write a research proposal;
• consolidate and provide further practice in the writing conventions and main academic genres in linguistics;
• develop strategies for effective dissemination of the research design and of preliminary findings in an oral presentation.

• Planning your MA dissertation
• Writing a research proposal
• Research ethics in Linguistics
• Writing a research paper
• Linguistic data in sociolinguistics
• Presentation workshop for the MA Dissertation

• 5 x 2-hour sessions (lectures and seminars)
• 2 x 4-hour sessions for presentation workshops
• 2 x 4-hour assessed presentations
• independent study

On Blackboard, students will find slides for the individual sessions and links to information about ethical approval.

Submission of summative pieces of work will be via Turnitin on Blackboard.
 

By the end of this course students will be able to:

• design a research project that addresses a concrete research question, and contextualise this with the existing literature on the topic
• address ethical issues arising in linguistic research and design a research project compliant with ethical guidelines
   

By the end of this course students will be able to:

• identify, delineate and develop a research topic appropriate to the scale of a project
   

By the end of this course students will be able to:

• select and apply appropriate and ethical methods of data collection
• communicate their research design and findings in the form of an oral presentation
• write a research proposal

By the end of this course students will be able to:

• summarize and present original research findings in a concise and effective manner
• proposal writing skills
• presentation skills
   

Oral Feedback on Group Project. 

Oral and Written Feedback for Presentation. 

Written Feedback on Research Proposal.

Rice, Keren. 2006. Ethical issues in linguistic fieldwork: An overview. Journal of Academic Ethics 4.123-155.

Readings for individual sessions TBC by the individual tutors