Linguistics and English Language

Student in the Phonetics lab using the equipment

Study

Master's level studies

Are you thinking about Master's level studies in Linguistics and English Language? Join one of our information sessions to find out more.

Master's information sessions
Linguistics student outside reading a book

Research

  • Our Research

    For the last fifty years, we have been known for cutting-edge empirically-based theoretical and applied research in a wide range of research areas. We constantly strive to make links with potential users of our work.

  • Research Centres and Groups

    The department hosts active research groups in areas such as cognitive linguistics, corpus studies, discourse analysis, forensic linguistics, language testing, literacy, phonetics, and second language learning and teaching.

  • Research Facilities

    The Department has outstanding research resources. We have fully equipped laboratories for eye-tracking, phonetics, EEG (Electroencephalography) and child language analysis.

50 years of excellence

Celebrate the 50th anniversary of LAEL with us through a series of community events and public lectures. Stay tuned for the programme coming soon.

50th anniversary
Collection of Linguistics text books

Latest News

Images are of Professor Lauren Devine (left) and Professor Michaela Benson

‘Outstanding’ social scientists elected to receive high honour

Two professors from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Lancaster University are to be honoured for excellence in their fields and their substantial contributions to social science for public benefit.
A group, showing the lab members

Congratulations, Dr Lee!

Many congratulations to our PhD student Yun-Wei (Kelly), who successfully passed her PhD examination in March 2025.
Image shows a vaccine bottle and needle surrounded by clear test tubes and vials - background is pale muted blues and pinks

‘It's a shot, not a vaccine like MMR’: New scepticism prompts call for action

A new type of ‘vaccine scepticism’ has been uncovered by researchers at Lancaster University, who examined a nine-million-word corpus of tweets looking at vaccine comparisons and evaluations.
COVID-19 vaccine vials

‘It’s not a vaccine, it’s a shot’: uncovering a new trend in vaccine scepticism

'It has long been recognised that attitudes towards vaccines may be vaccine-specific, so that people may take up some, but not others', Professor Elena Semino, writes in The Conversation. In this article she explores scepticism of the COVID-19 vaccine and argues that 'the use of informal alternatives to the term “vaccine”, such as “shot”, in public health messaging may unintentionally contribute to this confusion about what counts as a vaccine.'
Image shows side of the green LICA building with students talking together in the sunshine and with green leafy trees in the background

Lancaster subjects are among best in the world and Linguistics takes third place  

Linguistics at Lancaster University has been ranked third in the world with eight other subjects making it into the world top 100, according to new rankings released today. 

More News

Upcoming Events

On
Now

Webinar: Study corpus linguistics at Lancaster

Friday 11 April 2025, 10:00am to Wednesday 11 June 2025, 11:00am
29th Apr

Webinar: MA in Language Testing - British Council sub-Saharan Africa scholarships 2025

Tuesday 29 April 2025, 2:00pm to 2:45pm
7th May

MC/HL2C Seminar: Katrien Segaert

Wednesday 7 May 2025, 2:00pm to 3:30pm

More Events

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