Major
	Linguistics (BA) from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Minor
	Linguistics
Four-year Graduation Plan
	Yes
Honors
	Yes
Links
	Web Site Courses General Catalog

Linguists study the underlying principles of human languages. They are interested in understanding how children learn their native language without much instruction before they enter school and how people speak and understand sentences they have never heard before. Linguists also study language change through time. Some linguists study how damage at different locations in the brain causes different types of linguistic problems.

Rather than attempting to learn many languages, linguists search for the organizational principles of the world’s languages.

The description of formal patterns of human language has a number of applications. Linguistics is linked with anthropology and other social sciences in studying how language use relates to culture, region, class, and gender. It is connected to psychology, speech, and hearing in studying how children learn language, how speakers process and interpret language, and how injuries and disorders affect both production and perception of speech.

Linguists and computer scientists are discovering ways of identifying and representing sentence structures as part of knowledge and reasoning processes. Linguistics also has important ties with instruction in foreign languages and English as a second language (ESL).

• Why Study Linguistics at Iowa?
• Course Work
• Facilities
• Careers
• Scholarships

Why Study Linguistics at Iowa?
Iowa’s linguistics department has an outstanding national reputation. It enjoys the advantages of a liberal arts college atmosphere as well as instruction from nationally and internationally distinguished scholars. Class size is small, and students may paticipate in faculty research projects.

As a linguistics major, you'll have the option to choose an emphasis in Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL). If you're interested in earning a master's degree in linguistics, you may apply to a joint degree program in which you'll earn a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in a total of five years.

Course Work
Students majoring in linguistics earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. The BA requires a minimum of 120 semester hours (s.h)., including 30 s.h. for the major. The program is well rounded. You'll be encouraged to combine linguistics with your interests in languages, anthropology, computer science, speech pathology, and other areas.

All students majoring in linguistics complete the following courses.

• Introduction to Linguistics
• Phonetics
• Syntactic Analysis
• Phonological Analysis
• A course in language history or in an old language

You'll also complete several elective courses in linguistics, which you'll choose in consultation with your advisor.

If you're interested in teaching English to non-native speakers abroad or in earning a graduate degree in second language acquisition, you might opt for the linguistics major's emphasis in Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL). If you do, you'll devote three of your elective courses to the emphasis.

See Linguistics in the UI General Catalog to learn more about the major and for information about graduating with honors or earning a minor in linguistics.

Joint BA/MA Degree
The Department of Lingistics offers a joint bachelor's/master's degree program that enables qualified linguistics students to receive a Master of Arts degree in linguistics with TESL focus with only one year of study beyond the BA degree. To be eligible, students must be University of Iowa undergraduates majoring in linguistics, must complete at least 80 s.h. of undergraduate work (typically by the end of their fifth semester), and must have a grade-point average of at least 3.50 when they submit their application for admission to the joint program.

Facilities
The Department of Linguistics reading room provides a common meeting place for faculty and students and houses a modest library. The department's computer lab has 14 workstations used for teaching and research.

Careers
Graduates have found work teaching English as a second language overseas. Unique teaching opportunities worth exploring include those with the Peace Corps and Teach For America.

A number of companies regularly hire employees with linguistics degrees, such as Microsoft, Xerox, Apple, Hewlett-Packard, and other high-tech firms. Opportunities also exist for government work, for example, as a special agent linguist for the FBI.

Some graduates choose to pursue advanced study in linguistics or other disciplines. A master’s degree with TESL emphasis qualifies graduates to teach English as a second language in the United States or overseas. Graduates with bachelor’s degrees in linguistics may be admitted to certain graduate programs without additional academic preparation, such as anthropology, English literature, foreign language specializations, law, library science, philosophy, psychology, and sociology.

Scholarships
Consult multiple sources for scholarship information, including the Office of Admissions, the Office of Student Financial Aid, and departmental web sites.