Psychology and Linguistics

Psychology and linguistics is a pairing that tackles the most extraordinary feature of human beings: our capacity for language. Psychology provides the scientific tools to study the mind, brain and behaviour, examining how we perceive, remember, reason, feel and interact. Linguistics analyses language itself, from its sounds and structures to its meanings and social functions.

Together they converge on the questions that are most fundamental to both: how do children acquire language? How does the brain represent and process linguistic information? How does language shape thought?

And how does communication function in social interaction?

At the University of Edinburgh, one of the leading centres for both psychology and linguistics in the world, this four-year degree develops your understanding of psychology as an experimental and observational science, as the university's own description puts it, using evidence from research studies to develop and evaluate theories. The linguistics strand gives you rigorous training in phonetics and phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and the study of language in social context. A year abroad is part of the programme, giving you the opportunity to study at a partner institution overseas and to engage with different research traditions and linguistic environments.

The combination develops both the quantitative, experimental skills of empirical science and the analytical, interpretive skills of linguistic inquiry. You will become comfortable with research design, statistical analysis, corpus linguistics, experimental methodology and theoretical argument, a genuinely broad and rigorous intellectual formation.

Graduates go on to careers in speech and language therapy (with further professional training), psychology (with further professional training for regulated practice), applied linguistics, language technology, human-computer interaction, education, research, and roles requiring understanding of communication and language across many sectors. Further study at masters or doctoral level in psychology, linguistics, cognitive science or language technology is also a well-established route.