Master of Research - Linguistics

Study languages from across the world, from their sounds and structures to their social functions. Students explore what features are shared across all languages, and what the significance of their differences are. Compared to the University of Essex MA courses, the MRes programmes offer more flexibility and fewer taught modules, as the emphasis of the course is on the dissertation and individual research assignments. Students must have a draft research proposal at the application stage, and a supervisor is assigned to students to guide them in their choice of modules and work on their dissertation.

This Essex course should interest students if they want to continue their study of linguistics while developing strong research skills. The MRes Linguistics provides tailored support for the researcher-in-training, in any of the areas, with a range of subject-specific and research-support graduate modules available. Taught modules may include: theoretical and descriptive phenology, syntactic theory, phonetics, semantics, and pragmatics.

Essex is one of the largest and most prestigious language and linguistics departments in the world, a place where talented students become part of an academic community in which the majority of research is rated ‘world-leading’ or ‘internationally excellent’. They are also ranked 13th in the UK for Linguistics in the QS World University Rankings by Subject (2020).

In this course students develop key employability skills including thinking analytically, research design, data collection using quantitative and qualitative methods, data analysis and essay writing. The course can lead to a career in areas such as academia, secondary school teaching, forensics, publishing, administration, and public service.