English Language and English Literature

English language and English literature together form the two principal academic traditions within the English subject area, and studying them in combination gives you access to both the scientific analysis of language as a system and the humanistic interpretation of literary texts as artistic and cultural objects. English language examines how the language works, how it varies across social contexts and communities, how it has changed historically, and how it is used to construct identity and meaning in everyday life. English literature engages with the canon and beyond, asking how writers use language to create, challenge, and transform our experience of the world.

At Liverpool Hope University, this four-year full-time programme, which includes a foundation year, uses Liverpool's distinctive linguistic landscape as a resource. The city's accents, dialects, bilingual heritage in Chinatown, and the Scandinavian linguistic traces on the Wirral provide a rich real-world context for studying how language functions in a living community. The literature strand develops your capacity for close reading, interpretation, and critical analysis across a wide range of texts and traditions.

The programme includes a sandwich year, a year abroad, and a work placement, giving you substantial professional and international experience. With a typical entry tariff of 88 UCAS points, the programme is accessible.

Graduates from English language and literature programmes are well placed across a wide range of careers. Teaching, publishing, journalism, copywriting, communications, marketing, the civil service, arts administration, and the creative industries are all common destinations. The breadth of the combined degree, covering both scientific analysis of language and humanistic literary interpretation, makes graduates genuinely versatile.

Postgraduate study in English language, literature, linguistics, creative writing, or education provides a natural continuation.