The Linguistics Pathway combines the expertise of three institutions, Lancaster University, University of Liverpool, and The University of Manchester, in focusing on the intersection of language and society. The pathway covers areas such as sociolinguistics, regional and social variation of English and other languages, multilingualism and language acquisition, the status of minority languages and language policy more generally, the pragmatics of language use in communication, psycholinguistics, and more. Particular strengths of the three-institution consortium include the study of language variation and change, especially in phonetics and phonology, laboratory phonetics (both acoustic and articulatory, e.g. ultrasound tongue imaging), phonology (both laboratory and theoretical), dialectal variation in English, corpus linguistics, discourse analysis, and the use of advanced quantitative methods in linguistics.

Programmes eligible for NWSSDTP funding

N.B. Master’s programmes can only be funded as part of a 1+3/2+2 Studentship

Lancaster University

• MA Discourse Studies
• MA English Language and Literary Studies
• MA Language and Linguistics
• PhD Linguistics
• PhD Applied Linguistics by Thesis and Coursework

University of Liverpool

• MA Applied Linguistics
• PhD English

University of Manchester

• MA Linguistics
• PhD Linguistics

For information on how to apply for funding, please visit our How to Apply page.

Pathway Representatives

Contact details for Linguistics Pathway Representatives at each institution can be found here

Current Linguistics NWSSDTP students

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Luke Adam Carroll (2018 Cohort)

• Lancaster University
• Email Address: l.a.carroll@lancaster.ac.uk
• MethodsX Stream: Quantitative Methods

Investigating regional variation in British English using Big Data: new applications for forensics and criminal justice investigations

Regional variation in prosodic features of speech (e.g. rhythm, voice quality) remain understudied for British English despite forming a fundamental part of forensic speaker comparison practices. My research will develop an account of dialect variation in the UK using new corpora of unprecedented scale and quality – providing large-scale, UK-wide, quantitative analyses for a number of prosodic and segmental speech parameters.

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Seren Parkman (2021 Cohort)

• Lancaster University
• Email Address: s.parkman@lancaster.ac.uk

The Role of Chronological, Biological and Social Ageing in Speech Production

Chronological age is used widely in academic research and yet it is poorly understood how well it truly captures ageing. Consequently recent research highlights biological and social ageing as perhaps better indicators. My research aims to understand how these three forms of ageing influence speech production, with the implication of improving healthcare, and how we conceptualise age in future research.

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Linguistics NWSSDTP Alumni

Pending