Linguistics with Chinese or Japanese BA Honours

Course overview

This four-year Linguistics with Chinese or Japanese degree concentrates on developing your understanding of how languages work, how we communicate, and the growth of language in the mind.

You'll explore linguistics in the context of English and either the Chinese or Japanese language. You'll build a firm foundation of skills and knowledge to pursue many potential career paths.

You will study the language of your choice from a beginner or advanced level depending on previous experience. Building your fluency in Mandarin Chinese or Japanese alongside your study of linguistics will give you a unique perspective on the language.

In your third year, you'll immerse yourself in East Asian culture as you spend the year in China or Japan. You'll further improve your language skills and confidence, and gain a first-hand appreciation for the language in context.

Our cutting-edge programme is shaped by the research specialisms of our world-leading researchers. This ensures, that your studies explore the latest ideas and most exciting areas of linguistics, such as:

• first and second language acquisition
• language evolution and computational modelling
• language variation and change
• psycholinguistics
• theoretical linguistics

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Your course and study experience - disclaimers and terms and conditions
Please rest assured we make all reasonable efforts to provide you with the programmes, services and facilities described. However, it may be necessary to make changes due to significant disruption, for example in response to Covid-19.

View our Academic experience page, which gives information about your Newcastle University study experience for the academic year 2024-25.

See our terms and conditions and student complaints information, which gives details of circumstances that may lead to changes to programmes, modules or University services.

Your future

English Language and Linguistics students acquire a range of valuable skills which equip them to pursue diverse career paths.

Your training can be used in:

• teaching English as a foreign language
• publishing
• journalism
• advertising, branding and marketing
• information services and data science

You will gain skills such as critical reasoning and problem solving, project and data management, oral and written communication, collaboration and independent research.

Our degrees provide excellent preparation for a wide number of professions. With further training, our graduates have also become:

• lexicographers
• translators and interpreters
• speech and language therapists
• social researchers
• legal sector workers (including forensic linguists)

Employability

Employability and the engagement with the wider world go hand-in-hand in this degree.

Many of our modules, particularly in your final year, model their assessments on the kind of tasks you might be employed to do:

• constructing marketing briefs
• summarising reports
• drafting website copy
• curating exhibitions
• designing experiments
• coding websites
• analysing data
• writing a clear and persuasive argument

Beyond our modules, there are plenty of extracurricular opportunities. These range from freelance work for Newcastle’s student newspaper to paid internships in the department. In particular, the Newcastle Centre for Literary Arts hires students to work on everything from event management to app design.