Linguistics and Psychology BA (Hons)

About This Course

On this Linguistics and Psychology joint honours degree, you will learn about behaviour from infancy to old age, and deal with the biological, social and individual factors that affect human psychology and language use.

Studying linguistics will enable you to learn about, understand and interpret many aspects of human language. On this Linguistics and Psychology course, you will study the ‘science’ behind language, including possible sounds used in speech and their combination (phonetics, phonology), how words are built up morphology), what distinguishes sentences from just strings of words (syntax), meaning (semantics and pragmatics), the effect that society, culture and norms have upon language use (sociolinguistics) and how languages change over time. 

Linguistics is the study of how language works and how and why language is used. Linguists look at not only how people learn, understand and speak language, but also at the way different people use language differently. Linguistics has a theoretical dimension but also an applied dimension – such as language technology, language policy and language in education.

You will also have the opportunity to learn about the ways in which different languages are different or similar in terms of their grammar, how society and language go hand-in-hand, and the functions and status that different languages have across the world.

Psychology is the scientific study of how people behave, feel, think and learn. As a science and as a profession, Psychology makes a difference to people in the real world, by improving quality of life across a wide range of areas.

In Psychology, you will study the mind, thought and behaviour, and you will learn about how to describe and explain how people live, think, socialize and develop. You will get the opportunity to find about things like: the factors that govern human psychological behaviour, how our environment influences our thoughts and feelings, how children’s minds develop and change as they grow older, and about research methods and advances in the field of psychology.

Why choose Bangor University for this course?

• Teaching staff are key researchers with specialisms in areas such as bilingualism, child language acquisition and language disorders.
• You will gain a sound and scientific insight into the structure and use of language and human behaviour as well as a sound and scientific insight into the structure and use of language, its history and the relationship between language and society.
• We are a vibrant, accessible, friendly department with staff committed to high-quality teaching, excellent student experience, strong pastoral support, and the integration of current cutting-edge research and topics into your lectures throughout the duration of your studies. We are also dedicated to ensuring that our Linguistics and Psychology students develop excellent skills in critical thinking, data analysis, presentation and independent research to enhance their employability upon graduation.
• Our teaching staff are also active researchers in a range of applied and theoretical areas relating to Linguistics, English Language and Psychology - many have international reputations in the field.
• Our state-of-the-art learning facilities include a professional grade sound / recording studio (our Speech laboratory), an eye tracking laboratory, and an event-related potential (ERP) laboratory and a corpus-linguistics resource facility. We also have audio and video equipment that can be checked out for field work. Our facilities also include an extensive collection of books on Linguistics and English Language and a language library which is maintained by our undergraduate student association - the Bangor Linguistics Society (BLS). 

Course Content

This Linguistics and Psychology course will be taught by a combination of lectures, tutorials and/or seminars, depending on the module and level. You will choose 120 credits of modules relating to Linguistics and/or Psychology each year, where you start by learning the foundational knowledge required to study in this field in the different subdisciplines, proceeding to more in-depth intermediate-level study before choosing what areas to specialize in. Modules are assessed on the basis of different kinds of coursework, including essays, reports, oral presentations, tests, exams, data analysis, etc. You will do a dissertation in your final year which represents a research project which you will undertake under the supervision of a member of academic staff.