Department of Linguistics
1. How is language related to communication?
Language helps us convey information to other people. It allows us to represent the external world to one another: the physical people, places, things, actions and events that we can observe. It also allows us to convey more internal aspects of our experience: the subjective states of mind and feelings that are part of our cognitive and perceptual worlds. Besides conveying external and internal information to other people, language also allows us to perform actions (such as requests, warning, promises), convey moods, express various facets of our identities, and form personal and social relationships.
2. Is language all that we need to communicate?
No. Language is a primary means of communicating, but it is not the only one. Our program also considers other sources of meaning (e.g. visual, physical, symbolic) that combine together with language to allow us to communicate with one another. Our program will also teach you about different models of communication that combine language, speaker intention, action, context, and interaction along with other modalities of information and expression. We differ from most graduate programs in Communication, however, because we do stress-in both theory and methodology-the primary role of language for communication.
3. The MA in Linguistics with a track in Language and Communication is a degree offered by the Linguistics Department. Do I need a background in Linguistics to be admitted to the program?
No, not at all. But don't be intimidated by Linguistics! Basically, linguists are people who like to solve puzzles about language and are curious about how language is part of how people think, act, and interact. If you haven't had any prior courses in Linguistics (or if you want to be reminded of what you did learn), the MA provides a 'gateway' course in Linguistics that will prepare you for the remaining coursework. All of the courses will provide enough linguistic background to understand the course material.
4. If we don't need a background in Linguistics, what kind of background do we need?
Our program is well suited for people with various backgrounds. Included are college graduates who majored in Linguistics, but also those with backgrounds in the Humanities (e.g. English, Foreign Languages, History, Philosophy) or Social Sciences (Anthropology, Economics, Sociology). College graduates with Science, Business or Engineering majors, including pre-professional students (aiming to do post-baccalaureate work in Law School, Medical School, or Business School) would also benefit from our program. Members of the workforce (both public and private sectors) who seek advancement in their current positions might be able to do so through our MA.
5. What will we learn in the new program in Language and Communication? You'll learn that language has a profound impact on our lives: it influences how we act, who we are, and how we view the world. It is through language that we accomplish a great deal of our daily work: we formulate plans, present proposals, negotiate contracts, develop brands, resolve disputes, provide advice, diagnose problems, hold meetings, and provide social, legal, and commercial services. In today's workplace, however, people with different ways of using language (based on nationality, ethnicity, race, class, gender, region, age, and culture) often work together in what are frequently fast paced and multi-tasking environments. Sometimes they end up misunderstanding one another or making mistakes that can have unfortunate consequences.
You'll learn that one way we can try to avoid these problems is to learn more about language and its role in communication. You'll do so by gaining answers to the following sorts of questions:
How are sounds, forms, and meanings put together to construct messages? How does context influence meaning?
How do explicit and implicit meanings combine to reveal peoples' intentions?
How can language perform actions?
What are the differences between spoken and written language?
Why can stories have powerful effects?
How do we communicate electronically?
What are the costs and benefits of doing so?
How do people who have different backgrounds communicate with each other?
By learning about language and communication, then, you'll learn that we can put language to work for us: we can take a proactive role in helping people accomplish a variety of interpersonal and institutional goals in a range of workplaces. We can use language not only to reflect, but also to change, our relationships, our work and our world.
6. Can you be more specific about what we will study?
Linguistics in general is concerned with both the internal structure of language (universal and language-specific principles for building sounds into words and words into sentences) and the ways in which we use language to interact with, and change, the external world. It is the latter concern that is the focus of the MA in Language and Communication. The specific areas that address this concern are the following:
Discourse Analysis focuses on the study of language above the sentence (text) and beyond the sentence (in context). Discourse analysts 'dissect' texts and contexts from a wide array of sites in everyday life, including conversations among friends, doctor/patient interactions, office documents (memos, minutes) and televised political debates. Issues addressed include how texts build cohesion (what holds a text together) and coherence (overall unity, topic, and message in context); how texts that tell a story differ from those that describe something, provide an explanation or list instructions; how texts reflect, and help create, social and cultural stability (or change).
Sociolinguistics is the study of all facets of language within their social and cultural contexts. A major focus is how people with different social identities (e.g. gender, age, ethnicity, race, socioeconomic status, national and regional origin) speak in different situations. Issues addressed include how ways of pronouncing words, choices of words, and patterns of words change depending on the social situation and our sense of the social relationship; how these means of speaking cluster together to form personal and cultural styles; why people from different communities or cultures misunderstand what is said, meant, and done.
Pragmatics focuses on how speakers use language to present information and how hearers draw inferences from what is said about the speaker's communicative intention. Some of the issues addressed are how particular ways of speaking (including the choice of words, sentence forms, and prosody (intonation, rhythm, pitch)) convey subtle features of messages; how language conveys 'who did what, when, where, why, and how;' how we use language to accomplish 'speech acts' (e.g. apologies, declarations, requests, threats) that bring us closer together or take us further apart.
7. Within the areas of Discourse Analysis, Sociolinguistics and Pragmatics, what courses will we take? Students without a background in Linguistics take one 'gateway' course that introduces principles of sound, form, meaning and use. (Students with a background in Linguistics can waive that course.) Remaining courses are 3 Basic courses and 4 (or 6) Advanced courses, depending on whether you choose to write a Master's Thesis; see How long will it take me to complete an MA in Language and Communication? below.
Overall requirements:
8 courses (24 credits) plus Master's Thesis or 10 courses (30 credits).
Other than the first required course (for students with little or no background in Linguistics), there is flexibility in all course requirements. Please note that there is no non-native language requirement.
Required courses
LING 401: General Linguistics (may be waived if student has a background in Linguistics)
3 additional courses, to be selected from the following:
Speech acts
Pragmatics
Discourse Analysis: Narrative
Discourse Analysis: Conversation
Approaches to Discourse
Cross/Intercultural communication
Introduction to Sociolinguistics
Sociolinguistic Field Methods
Electives
4- 6 courses (depending on Master's Thesis option), to be selected from the above list (with permission from advisor) or from the following list:
Computational Tools for Linguists
Multimodal discourse
American Dialects
Corpus Linguistics
Linguistics in the professions
Language and the internet
Linguistics and writing
Approaches to discourse analysis
Variation analysis
Ethnography of communication
Statistics for Linguists
Language and law
Language and aging
Language and gender
Language and the media
Language and medical discourse
Intertextuality
Cross-disciplinary Discourse Analysis
Alternative courses, that reflect the needs and interests of individual students, may be selected under the guidance of the faculty advisor. They may include courses in other departments or schools within Georgetown, as well as courses at area universities (e.g. American, George Mason, George Washington) through the Washington Area Consortium of Universities.
Students may also request to take additional courses in the Basic group to fill their Advanced requirements. Courses from other GU departments and schools, as well as courses from universities in the consortium, may also fill the Advanced requirements.
8. Who will teach the courses in the program? Your courses will be taught by faculty in the Linguistics Department (http://www1.georgetown.edu/departments/linguistics/faculty/), faculty from other Georgetown programs, departments and schools, and local experts from the Washington D.C. community.
9. Can you describe some of the faculty who will Basic and Advanced courses? Of course. Here are descriptions of faculty who will teach many of the courses in the areas of Discourse Analysis, Sociolinguistics and Pragmatics.
Deborah Tannen (University Professor,
Deborah Schiffrin (Professor, Georgetown University) has written and edited several books on discourse analysis and pragmatics. Discourse Markers showed how small words and phrases (such as and, well, I mean and y'know) play central roles in our everyday communication. Approaches to Discourse is used worldwide as an introduction to this multi-disciplinary and interdisciplinary area. Schiffrin is completing a 2nd edition of this volume and also preparing a general introduction to discourse analysis (Language, text and talk). Her newest book, In Other Words (to appear in 2006), analyzes how we repair, or avoid, mistakes while talking and how we retell stories. A co-edited volume on Discourse and Identity explores how language and communication provide symbolic resources for conveying and contesting a variety of social and personal identities. The Handbook of Discourse Analysis, co-edited by Schiffrin, Tannen and Hamilton, is a volume with wide circulation not only as a resource for scholars, but as a preeminent reference book. Schiffrin has also consulted for lawyers on questions of word meaning and use, and held workshops on speech acts in the workplace.
Heidi E. Hamilton (Associate Professor, Georgetown University) is an expert on the interrelationships between language and a variety of health care issues and contexts. Her early work on Alzheimer's disease, Conversations with an Alzheimer's Patient, is the first work in the area of language and Alzheimer's disease to depart from the clinical paradigm and dependence on experimentally-elicited data. Glimmers, a general interest book on these issues, was published in 2003. Hamilton has also collaborated with speech and language pathologists in the Defense Head Injury Project at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., with physicians, nurses, and hospital administrators in an investigation of professional communication issues within Georgetown University Medical Center, and with Georgetown Medical Center's genetic counselors. To promote discussions on real-world applications of linguistics, she co-edited Language, Linguistics, and the Professions: Education, Journalism, Law, Medicine, and Technology in 2002. Her latest books include the forthcoming Doing Discourse Analysis across Disciplines and the co-edited Genetic Counseling as Discourse. Hamilton also serves as a consultant with a health care communications company, focusing on the relationship between physician-patient communication and health.
Natalie Schilling-Estes (Associate Professor, Georgetown University) has written extensively on dialects and language variation in the United States. She is the co-author of the authoritative American English: Dialects and Variation (both editions), co-editor of the scholarly reference volume Handbook of Language Variation and Change, and co-author of a general interest book on the island dialect of Ocracoke Hoi Toide on the Outer Banks. In honor of her academic achievements, Schilling-Estes was named the American Dialect Society Professor in the 2003 Linguistic Society of American Institute. In addition to her academic achievements, she has also been involved in numerous outreach programs, including a CD-ROM on African American English, and dialect dictionaries of Smith Island English and Lumbee English, as well as helping to produce various exhibits on local dialects and culture. Schilling-Estes is also extending her work on dialects and variation into the area of forensic linguistics, the investigation of language for the purposes of criminal investigation (e.g. with workshops for the FBI).
Michael Lempert (Assistant Professor,
10. Why is the Georgetown University Linguistics Department a good place to study language and communication? The Linguistics Department at Georgetown University is unsurpassed in the areas of Discourse analysis, Sociolinguistics and Pragmatics. Evidence of this abounds through the achievements and reputations of our faculty. (See above Q/A Can you describe some of the faculty who will Basic and Advanced courses?) In addition, Georgetown's location in Washington D.C. provides numerous opportunities for internships and employment in both the public and private sector. Georgetown students can draw upon the resources of the MBNA Career Center (http://careerweb.georgetown.edu/) for career counseling and advice, to pursue internships, and to search for post-graduate employment.
11. How long will it take me to complete an MA in Linguistics with a track in Language and Communication?
There are two options for completion of degree. How long it takes you to finish depends on various factors: which option you choose, how many courses you take each semester, and whether you are employed while taking coursework.
Option (1) is to take 10 courses. Your time-of-completion will vary depending on how many courses you take per semester. We would recommend 3- 4 courses per semester. So you time-of-completion would be at least 1½ academic years.
Option (2) is to take 8 courses and write a Master's Thesis. This option allows you to complete your course work in one academic year (by taking 4 courses each semester). Your Master's Thesis could then be completed during Year 2, giving you the opportunity to be employed full time while completing your degree.
12. Can I attend as a part time student?
Yes, but we would recommend taking 2- 4 courses a year if you do so.
Students may also wish to pursue careers in the following:
Health care. Language is a central part of health care communication. We present our symptoms to doctors and nurses; we use the Web to gain information on symptoms and diagnoses; we read advertisements, and hear commercials, about medicines; we follow directions and heed warnings about over-the-counter and prescription drugs. The efficacy of these communications can help, or hinder, health care. The MA in Language and Communication will help you learn how to analyze, train, and consult with health care professionals to enhance the quality of health care through improved communication. It will also give you practical insights into health-related and science writing.
Law. Lawyers and those who work in the legal profession depend on language in numerous ways: they write legally binding contracts, plan estates and prepare wills, defend or prosecute those accused of crimes. The MA in Language and Communication will help you interpret the complex language of statutes and contracts, analyze ambiguity and presuppositions (e.g., in testimony or in cross-examination), elucidate attitudes toward language in legal proceedings, analyze dialect features, or writing and speaking styles, to aid in criminal investigations. and learn how to train international lawyers to become 'fluent' writers in American legal genres.
Business. The worlds of commerce, finance, marketing and management depend on language. Language plays a major role in the negotiation of contracts, provision of services, management of customers, the marketing and advertisement of products, the branding of corporations, leadership during meetings, and formation and management of task forces. The MA in Language and Communication will help you understand the role of spoken, written and computer-mediated communication in a range of business settings. It will also help you understand how communicative differences among people (based on nationality, gender, race, ethnicity, age and social class) impact workplace efficiency and productivity and how linguistic and stylistic differences can be integrated into both marketing and branding.
14. Can the MA Linguistics with a track in Language and Communication help me prepare for a course in education? Yes. If someone already certified to teach primary, middle, or secondary school is interested in learning about language in the classroom, our general curriculum will provide them with excellent tools by which to do so. Language works in concert with other modalities of communication as a conduit through which students acquire a range of skills and a huge amount of information; learn how to solve problems; think (and write) about complex issues in various genres; express their opinions and thoughts in different formats; engage in civil discussion about their differences. Like teachers, students bring their own ways of speaking, developed through and within their homes, communities and cultures, into the classroom. The expertise of our faculty in discourse analysis, sociolinguistics and pragmatics (see Questions 6 and 7) will help teachers understand not only the speech activities, social interaction, and discourse in their classrooms, but also how diversity among students' social identities (due to gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, nationality) can be related to different ways of communicating and acting in the classroom. For those interesting in teaching English as a second language, the Georgetown Linguistics Department also offers more specialized degrees in teaching: a Master of Arts in Teaching English as a Second Language; Master of Arts in Teaching English as a Second Language and Bilingual Education.
15. How can I learn more about the MA in Linguistics with a track in Language and Communication? You can contact Deborah Schiffrin or Erin Esch.