Bachelor of English: Concentration in Linguistics at San Francisco State University

The English Department at SF State provides opportunities for students to study in a variety of subfields that make up the English major. Join us and become part of a racially, linguistically, and culturally diverse community of learners engaging in a dialog between our histories and experiences, and new ideas and literacies.

Linguistics is a concentration within the English BA. At the undergraduate level, students begin to explore the patterns of sounds, words, sentences, and conversations in a variety of languages and speech communities. What similarities are found between English, Spanish, and Swahili, for example? What patterns do Turkish and Japanese share? How can you characterize the difference between "empty" and "hollow" when the dictionary lists them as synonyms? How do conversations among teenagers in San Francisco differ from conversations among 40-year-olds?

Students interested in any field involving language analysis – including but not limited to law, education, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and linguistics – benefit from preparation in examining language data with the rigorous methods of the discipline. Students who plan to teach language to gain a valuable background in the structure of English along with a deeper understanding of how languages are acquired. Undergraduate majors are encouraged to take courses in other languages as well as courses investigating language from the perspectives of other fields, such as speech and communication, psychology, computer science, and anthropology.

1. Students will be able to differentiate how language use varies across the contexts and genres of professional writing and rhetoric, literature, and linguistics. (Disciplinary Knowledge)
2. Students will be able to formulate and pursue methodologically sound lines of inquiry, effectively placing their ideas side by side the ideas of others, drawing persuasively on credible primary and secondary sources. (Research)
3. Students will be able to produce rhetorically effective texts across a range of digital, print, and multimedia formats. (Written Communication/Digital Literacy)
4. Students will be able to carefully read and critically examine the ways in which culture and global context affect language, literature, and writing. (Global Perspectives)
5. Students will be able to analyze language and texts in relation to the historical and social contexts in which they are situated. (Historical Thinking)
6. Students will be able to apply critical thinking, close reading, and rhetorical persuasion to engage productively and ethically in scholarly, civic, and professional communities. (Application & Engagement)
7. Students in the linguistics concentration will be able to demonstrate a solid understanding of the fundamental linguistic subfields of phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and sociolinguistics.
8. Students in the linguistics concentration will be able to analyze grammatical aspects of English and other languages unfamiliar to them.
9. Students in the linguistics concentration will be able to produce a field-appropriate research paper conforming to all writing conventions, citation conventions, and structural conventions in linguistics research.