Pursuing a postgraduate degree requires a range of advanced study and research skills. These include selecting and critically engaging with relevant literature, adopting effective reading strategies, identifying a research gap, formulating answerable research questions. These steps will guide you in developing an independent research project.

With the support of a supervisor, you will consider the ethical dimensions of data collection, conduct your analysis, interpret the results and reflect on the wider implications of your findings. You will develop an academic writing style appropriate to your discipline, following relevant conventions, addressing issues such as referencing and plagiarism.

This module aims to enhance your academic practice and guide your dissertation project through a programme of compulsory and optional lectures, workshops, writing retreats and self-study resources. What you learn will underpin your success in your MA coursework and the final dissertation, providing the tools and strategies to do research with confidence and academic integrity.

Familiarise yourself with the ways in which language tests and their components are developed and evaluated in this exciting module.

Starting with an overview of basic concepts and principles in language testing, you will then consider how language constructs – what we seek to measure – are defined, and how they may be realised in test tasks. It reviews a variety of common contemporary testing techniques and formats and it addresses current challenges for language test design, relating to developments in technology (e.g., how to utilise generative artificial intelligence) and to improved understanding from the field of second language acquisition of how languages are learnt.

We aim to help you to design language tests, and to evaluate test items critically, through the application and interpretation of descriptive statistics.

Corpus linguistics is a methodology whereby large collections of electronically transcribed texts are used in conjunction with computer tools to investigate language. This module aims to provide you with the skills needed to build, annotate and analyse your own corpora for a wide variety of linguistic projects.

In this module, you will learn how to use large collections of digital texts (corpora) and state-of-the-art computational tools to explore how language is used in real-world contexts. You will gain practical skills in building, annotating and analysing corpora, working with both existing datasets of written and spoken language, and your own data.

You will be introduced to key corpus methods such as frequency analysis, concordances, collocations, keywords and n-grams, alongside the statistical techniques needed to interpret results responsibly and meaningfully. You will also engage with essential issues such as research ethics, copyright and data quality and transparency in the digital age.

Through hands-on workshops, you will apply cutting-edge corpus approaches to areas including language teaching and testing, discourse analysis, forensic linguistics and digital humanities. Each week combines a lecture with a computer-based lab, using tools such as #LancsBox X and Lancaster Stats Tools Online.

Prepare for the contemporary culturally diverse workplace by expanding your understanding of core Intercultural Communication theories and concepts.

Culture can powerfully shape communication. Communication, in turn, is central to getting things done in any organisation. This role of culture has been prominently recognised in the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, leading organisations to increasingly value culturally competent communication.

You will explore questions such as:

• What do we mean by ‘culture’?
• What are some of the dimensions on which ‘cultures’ are said to vary?
• What makes communication ‘intercultural’?
• What is ‘intercultural competence’ and how can we develop and assess it?
• What are some of the key culturally influenced barriers to communication and what linguistic strategies can we use to overcome them?

You will critically evaluate key theories and concepts pertaining to these questions and apply them to the analysis of a small sample of real data.

Language and other forms of communication are instrumental in defining social issues and shaping social identities and relations. This module presents the latest topics and methodological developments in Critical Discourse Studies (CDS) – a field that aims to identify and expose the precise semiotic means by which power and inequality are enacted and resisted through texts.

You will be introduced to foundational ideas concerning the relationship between texts, discourse practice and society, as well as a range of analytical frameworks employed in contemporary CDS to deconstruct texts and reveal their ideological and persuasive properties. You’ll also consider what changes in communication technology mean for conceptions of discourse and power dynamics.

Reflecting changes in the political and media landscape, you will explore communicative modes besides language, including gestures and images, across a range of text-types, from political speeches and parliamentary debates to online and tv news, vox pops and digital social media content.

Through practical textual analysis, you will use the tools of CDS to consider current discourses where power and prejudice are enacted, legitimated and resisted, including discourses of immigration, political protest and right-wing populism.

This module introduces you to issues and methods in experimental phonetics, where we investigate the way speech sounds get produced, transmitted and perceived. You will be provided with the theoretical knowledge and practical skills necessary to undertake an independent research project in this area.

You’ll explore a range of contemporary areas, including articulatory and acoustic phonetics, speech perception, and sociophonetic variation. You’ll critically examine how phonetic theories can be tested using experimental methods and will learn to interpret results in light of broader debates in linguistics and cognitive science.

You will also learn how to perform acoustic analysis using software such as Praat and how to process, visualise and statistically analyse data using R (a statistical programming language).

You’ll be guided in all aspects of research design, including hypothesis formulation, experimental set-up, stimulus construction, participant recruitment, and ethical considerations.

This module aims to provide you with a solid foundation in speech science and equip you with key analytical skills in phonetics. It will introduce you to core concepts and theories that underpin speech production and perception, guide you through phonetic descriptions of speech sounds and introduce you to quantitative methods of analysing speech.

Through hands-on activities working on a wide range of speech materials, you will not only develop practical competence in acoustic analysis but also acquire a firm understanding of inter- and intra-speaker variation in speech. Building on this knowledge, this module will explore how human speech and speech analysis interact with the modern digital world, as well as critically examine issues and challenges in practical applications of speech science.

Our societies and workplaces are culturally diverse in many ways - age, disability, gender, nationality, race, religion, socio-economic background and more. Most communicative encounters can thus be seen as ‘intercultural’, and different cultural groups can have markedly different beliefs and expectations around these encounters. This module will explore this in detail.

You will examine questions such as:

• What is the best way to make a point when we negotiate?
• What are acceptable topics for discussion while waiting for a meeting to start?
• What makes a convincing answer to a story-based job interview question?
• Should symptoms be presented in a diagnostic interview?
• What is the most appropriate way to demonstrate interest in a conversation?

Working in small mixed culture teams, you will present a plausible scenario of an intercultural encounter and, drawing on Intercultural Communication theories, analyse what makes it (un)successful. You will also analyse independently how a social issue is presented in the media and identify possible impacts on communication.

Explore how multilingualism and language policy intersect with broader social, political and economic structures in this fascinating module.

You will investigate how language is shaped by power structures and, in turn, shapes society across different domains such as the state, institutions, corporations and families. Topics include:

• Language and social justice
• Governmentality
• Commodification
• Policymaking

Through the discussion of current applied research, you will develop critical thinking skills and gain insight into the methodological approaches used in this field. A key focus will be understanding how language practices and policies contribute to the reproduction of social inequalities, and how they could also serve as tools for resistance and change.

By the end of the module, you will be equipped to critically engage with multilingualism and language policy debates, assess relevant research and consider the ethical and political implications of language use in diverse contexts.

Showing you how language tests are developed and validated, from classroom progress tests to high-stakes proficiency examinations, this module will equip you with knowledge and skills to design tests and to write and critically evaluate test items yourself.

Measuring the language proficiency of individuals and groups of learners is vital in second language education. Assessment must focus on what matters in the context of use and be carried out carefully, to impact positively on teaching and learning, and provide meaningful data to inform further development, and potentially life-changing decisions for learners.

The module provides an overview of fundamental concepts in language assessment and the test development cycle. You will use practical statistical methods to analyse test scores and test items and consider how to interpret these results. You will be encouraged to reflect critically on the application of language tests in education and contemporary society more broadly.

Explore the intersection of forensic linguistics and forensic speech science as this module provides you with a combined toolkit for examining language in investigative and intelligence contexts.

The focus of this module is firmly on developing a critical, informed approach to language – whether written or spoken – as a form of evidence and/or intelligence. You will be given the opportunity to analyse textual and audio materials across a range of settings, such as police interviews, courtroom testimony, and covert surveillance. You will also have the chance to consider areas such as giving expert evidence, the viability of deception detection, the challenges of forensic transcription and the issues surrounding interpretation/translation in legal contexts.

Throughout the module, we will critically examine the rise of AI, along with its (mis)use in both criminal enterprises and professional analysis.

In this module, you’ll explore how language is acquired, processed and represented in the mind. Drawing on ideas from linguistics, psycholinguistics and cognitive science more broadly, we focus on the mechanisms that support language learning and real-time language processing across the lifespan.

We also explore how language interacts with other cognitive systems such as memory, attention and learning. Key topics include language acquisition in children and adults, bilingualism and multilingualism, implicit and statistical learning, and individual differences in aptitude.

Lancaster is a world-leading centre in Literacy Studies, an approach to the study of reading and writing in authentic contexts. In this module you will learn about how and why Literacy Studies evolved and how it contributes to researching practices in workplaces, education and all domains in which reading and writing activities occur.

You’ll be interested in people, texts, materials and technologies. A particular focus for you will be artificial intelligence, from its beginnings with early computing, through to the current societal upheavals, opportunities and challenges presented by Generative AI. This is not a technical module and whatever your experience or stance towards GAI, you will become excellently equipped to carry out your own study.

You’ll gain confidence from engaging with recent world-leading research in Literacy Studies approaches to AI. You will give a conference-style small group “roundtable” presentation of your initial idea and receive plenty of support in methodology, ethics and everything else you need for completion of your coursework.

Metaphor has become a focal point of research in linguistics and cognitive science where, far from an occasional literary fancy, it is recognised as a fundamental cognitive process that shapes our thoughts and actions in almost all aspects of life. This module introduces you to the latest theories, methods and applications of metaphor research.

You’ll be introduced to contemporary theories of metaphor beginning with conceptual metaphor theory before moving to developments in the idea of metaphor scenarios, as well as discourse dynamic and mental simulation approaches to metaphor. Through these frameworks, you’ll explore the creative and the cognitive functions of metaphor and see how metaphors are expressed in different modes of communication, including language, image and gesture.

You will engage with methods for identifying and classifying metaphors in discourse, testing the psychological reality of metaphors, and measuring the effects of metaphors on people’s attitudes and beliefs.

Toward the end of the module, you’ll explore several areas where metaphors really matter, including in connection with politics, health and the environment.

This module explores meaning in communication encompassing the core areas of pragmatics and intercultural communication. Questions include: How do people mean more than they literally say? How do people understand those implied meanings? What is the role of culture, and how does it interact with meanings? Is AI able to deal with implied meanings the way humans can?

The module is organised around four aspects of communication: (i) speaker intention and frameworks for describing speech acts or pragmatic acts; (ii) hearer inferencing and comprehension, including frameworks such as Gricean implicature and Relevance Theory; (iii) the interpersonal dynamics of interaction, especially politeness and impoliteness theories; (iv) context, and in particular cultural context. Intercultural communication will be a recurrent thread throughout.

Emphasis is placed throughout on the application of pragmatic theory to 'real' data and how that application affords insights into both the data and the theory. Data will mainly be spoken interactions but will include other data types too (e.g. AI generated).

We will conclude with an overview of methods in pragmatics and interaction and a critical reflection on the Anglo-centric nature of theorising in pragmatics.

This module reviews the principles, thinking and history underlying contemporary second language teaching practices.

You will explore what we know about the processes involved in language production and reception in a second language and uncovers implications for teaching of the language skills. It also reviews the developments in the teaching of the grammar and vocabulary of a foreign / second language and outlines the methods of language learning monitoring and provision of feedback in second language classrooms.

The lecture sessions will equip you with the necessary input on the principles and ideas associated with contemporary language teaching methods. The seminar sessions will give you space to discuss in small groups issues and concepts introduced in the lecture sessions, opportunities to critically engage with scholarly literature and opportunities to participate in experiential learning tasks.

As part of this module you will also learn about core techniques used in qualitative research, namely: interviews, focus-groups and classroom observation. You will have an opportunity to practise designing data collection instruments, collecting and analysing small samples of data.

How do we learn an additional language after childhood? Or maybe the question is how we learn after infancy? Because while we’re certain that learning a second or third or fourth language is different from learning languages in which we’re immersed at birth, we are constantly discovering more about learning an additional language. With this module, you join the exploration.

We probe dominant theories of second language acquisition, their relationship to linguistics, psychology and sociology and their connection to language learning and teaching. We explore language learning as both a cognitive and social process—developing an understanding of grammar and syntax, while also learning to communicate and participate within communities and societies.

We read seminal works, theoretical overviews and current research papers to sharpen your understanding and add concepts such as agency, identities, individual differences, awareness, mediation and implicit and explicit knowledge to your professional vocabulary.

Explore how linguistic variation, multilingualism and language policy intersect with broader social, political and economic structures. On this module you will come to understand how internal and external factors shape variation, how language practices and policies contribute to the reproduction of social inequalities and how they could also serve as tools for resistance and change. By the end of the module, you will be equipped to critically engage with language variation, multilingualism and language policy debates, assess relevant research, and consider the ethical and political implications of language use in diverse contexts.

Topics may include: different ways of answering sociolinguistic questions in relation to identity characteristics and broader social structures; theoretical paradigms including variationist sociolinguistics, critical sociolinguistics and language policy and planning; language and social inequality/justice; minority language speakers; raciolinguistics; language rights; global Englishes; the commodification of languages and speakers; language and governmentality.

You will draw on scholarly resources produced by a diverse range of voices, including scholars from or working in the Global South. We consciously choose theories and analytical frameworks, along with examples, from a wide range of social, economic, and historical contexts. Emphasis is placed on inclusive scholarship, drawing on work by a diverse array of voices to highlight how language practices and policies shape and are shaped by power, identity, and social structures.

On this module you’ll explore the major theoretical paradigms that have shaped linguistics, including structuralist, generativist and functionalist approaches, as well as contemporary theories that are currently reshaping the field. This will give you a solid foundation in key theories of language while also introducing you to frontier topics. Our focus will be on cognitive and usage-based frameworks, where you’ll reconsider fundamental assumptions about what language is and how it works and discover why comparing languages is central to cognitive science.

You’ll see that linguistic structure emerges through language use and that grammatical patterns are themselves meaningful and stored in the mind as whole units. You’ll learn that language is not a separate mental module – as previously assumed – but relies on general cognitive systems and processes such as memory and attention. You’ll see how meaning is grounded in bodily experience while also exploring the cultural forces that drive language evolution, acquisition and change.

Finally, you’ll examine the statistical learning mechanisms and mental simulations that support language and consider gesture and prosody as integrated features of a multimodal language faculty.