An understanding of language enhances our self-awareness, inspiring us to address fundamental questions about our communication as human beings. Linguistics is an increasingly important subject, impacting on areas in psychology, philosophy, education and artificial intelligence. It has real-world applications in such diverse fields as human rights, computer-assisted language learning, and the study of institutional language in settings like doctor-patient interactions, interviewer-interviewee dialogues, and courtroom exchanges.

This course will give you the unique skillset of using data science to tackle these topics by engaging with tools such as analysing large corpora of texts, conducting experiments, statistical analysis, and machine learning. It will allow you to develop your research and IT skills by collecting and analysing linguistic data using state-of-the-art technology, and a combination of team-work and independent projects will enhance your communication, problem-solving, and management skills.

At Essex, you will acquire a broad foundation in the study of language. Our diverse research looks at this uniquely human phenomenon from several angles: the structures that exist in the world’s languages, the variation in how people speak them, how humans process and understand language, and how languages are learned and best taught.

Your future

The purpose of the BA Linguistics with Data Science is to boost your employability by equipping you with solid foundations in the skills needed to work in the digital economy while also providing you with the substantial content of a linguistics degree that is valued by employers for its transferable skills relating to communication ability, critical and thinking skills as well as the broad cultural and social knowledge needed to analyse and curate content for social media.

Our Department's graduates have gone on to have careers in a wide variety of fields, including teaching, journalism, advertising, marketing, travel, communications, publishing, speech and language therapy, and business administration.

For example, some of our department’s recent graduates have gone on to work for a wide range of high-profile companies including:

• The British Council
• English in Action
• Cambridge University Press
• Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer
• Royal Bank of Scotland
• Norfolk Constabulary