Linguistics

 

The Linguistics department has two focal areas of strength and encourages students and researchers to join and contribute to these areas if possible. The first of these areas is an approach to language and communication from the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis. These are frameworks that views language as an interactive social practice, ideologically and socially loaded, and constituted by, as well as constituting society. SFL is a fast expanding approach to language that is providing insightful analyses of multimodality/visual communication, language and power and language and gender.
 
The second area of strength is in the study of multilingualism. In times of social transformation, language debates on the significance and use of varieties in multilingual contexts take on added importance. What languages are used officially affects people's chances of participation in state power structures, as well as their access to government agencies and services. Policies that acknowledge the importance of local, indigenous languages are therefore essential in the politics of broad popular participation in a program of social reconstruction. We approach the study of multilingualism from a range of perspectives, exploring its implications for education and for service provision, its role in literacy, including media, as well how to formulate a politics of language around multilingual realities. The particular forms that social transformation is taking in a globalizing South Africa, and across the region more generally, makes the study of multilingualism an exciting venture.
 
The Department of Linguistics aspires to live up to what could be expected of African academia in times of social transformation, namely a serious engagement with diversity on a day-to-day basis, an acute awareness of the importance of history in understanding multilingual dynamics, social relevance and critical engagement with discourses of change and development. To achieve this aspiration the department hosts monthly special seminars facilitating discussions with national and international scholars on theoretical and empirical issues around the areas of strength expressed above. Also, a number of research projects are pursued by senior staff with limited scholarships available for postgraduate study.  
 
Mission Statement
 
The Department of Linguistics, Language and Communication at the University of the Western Cape is dedicated to a socially responsible study of language within a framework of social transformation, individual and group empowerment, citizenship and voice. In this, the department is heir to a proud tradition at the University of the Western Cape of putting research and teaching at the service of the local community and its striving for equitable transformation.
 
Why study linguistics?
 
Linguistics is the study of the structure and use of language, a uniquely human capacity which enables us to communicate and which expresses and shapes the society in which we live. The ability to communicate is something we all share, and yet we very seldom stop to reflect on what exactly this ability entails. That is studying language can be such fun, as you learn about things you have some knowledge of already, but of which you were perhaps unaware.

The Linguistics Department offers a range of careers-oriented courses which explore the application and use of both linguistic and applied linguistic theory for the language related professions. At undergraduate level, these courses are presented in the Language & Communication programmes. Students register for a BA degree (3 years) in Language & Communication. At postgraduate level, students can specialise in either Linguistics or Applied Linguistics.
 
For more information, please contact:

Mrs Avril Grovers
Linguistics Department, Arts Faculty
University of Western Cape
Private Bag X17
Bellville, 7535
South Africa
agrovers@uwc.ac..za
+27 (0) 21 959 2978 (Tel.)
+27 (0) 21 959 1212 (Fax)