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Linguistics as a subject has been taught at Â鶹´«Ã½¸ßÇå°æ since the 1960s, making our department one of the first linguistics departments in the UK. We are a vibrant, accessible, friendly department with staff committed to providing an excellent doctoral student experience and strong academic support for the duration of your studies.  

Our academic staff provides expertise and PhD dissertation supervision in wide range of disciplines within Linguistics. This includes (but is not limited to) projects using qualitative, quantitative, experimental or ethnographic methodologies within following areas:   

• phonetics and phonology 
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• semantics and pragmatics 
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• child language acquisition 
• 1st and 2nd language acquisition 
• language development 
• language disorders 
• discourse analysis (including CDA, Multimodal and Cognitive Discourse Analysis (CoDA) 
• TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) 
• SLA and language teaching 
• corpus linguistics 
• language and communication 
• historical linguistics 
• language variation, use and change 
• contested languages 
• temporal language and the nature of figurative language 
• language technologies / natural language processing (NLP) 
• Welsh linguistics  

Students on our Linguistics PhD programme have access to state-of-the-art  learning facilities which include: 

• A professional grade sound / recording studio and speech laboratory (with Yamaha,  Alesis and RØDE recording equipment)  
• An eye tracking laboratory (with a Tobii Pro X2-60 eye tracker)  
• An event-related potential (ERP) laboratory (with an actiCHamp Plus ERP machine) 
• And dedicated corpus-linguistics software and resources.   

Our staff also have expertise in and provide support for the following: 

• Statistical software such as:  SPSS, R-Statistics and Excel.  
• Experimental psychology software such as E-Prime, GORILLA Experiment Builder, Open Sesame and Webexp. 
• Acoustic and phonetic analysis software such as: Audacity, Praat, and SIL Speech Analyzer 
• Standardised psychometric /language tests (e.g., EVT, BPVS, NARA, WISC, K-BIT, TROG, CELF) 
• A wide range of specialized corpora and concordance software including CHILDES and CLAN 

At Bangor you will be part of a vibrant, innovative research community which is supported through various events throughout the year, ranging from individual talks to informal seminars and workshops to large conferences. Many of these are open not just to academic staff, but also to students and to the general public. 

Programme Length

PhD: 3 years full-time; 5 years part-time; MPhil: 2 years full-time; 3 years part-time.

What will you study on this course?

Year One (Years One and Two for part-time students)

On beginning the Ph.D. programme, a supervisory committee will be set up for each student consisting of the Director of Graduate Studies as chair, the student’s main supervisor and a second supervisor. Where the Director of Graduate Studies is the main supervisor, the Head of School will act as chair. 

By week 6 of the first semester after the student’s registration, this committee will have produced a written document for the student’s file, outlining work which the student is expected to have completed by the end of the first year (two years in the case of part-time students), such as a review of the literature on their chosen topic, and a report on their pilot study. The document will include recommendations for any linguistics or research training modules to be attended during the year. 

The student should see their main supervisor regularly, as agreed by student and supervisor.

By week 5 of the second semester after registration (fourth in the case of part-time students) the student should submit a draft thesis chapter and a detailed thesis proposal/outline to their supervisory committee. This work will be discussed at a Annual Review meeting held in June, and chaired by the Director of Graduate Studies. The supervisory committee will then write a joint report either removing the probationary status of the student, or indicating what requirements have first to be satisfied.

Graduate Programme Transferable Skills

Students must take 30 credits from the Graduate Programme in their First Year. 

Year Two (Years Three and Four for part-time students)

During this year the student should aim to complete a first draft of their dissertation. An Annual review will take place in June to review progress. 

Year Three (Years Five and Six for part-time students)

The completed thesis should be submitted and examined during this year.

Length of thesis: There is no prescribed length, but the norm is between 80,000 and 100,000 words (350-400 pages).

It is possible to join the PhD programme after successfully completing a Masters in Linguistics or related subject at Bangor or elsewhere. Applicants who do not speak English as their native language must pass the IELTS English test with a score of 6.0 in all four components. Students who have an overall score of 5.5 on the IELTS can take a summer pre-sessional course in the University’s English Language Centre for Overseas Students (ELCOS).

This is a research degree, preparing you for an academic career in Linguistics or for other work requiring highly qualified individuals in related areas. The high level analytical and research skills acquired during this degree will increase your employability in areas such as communications, teaching, publishing, research etc.