Explore human language in various aspects, from its internal mental structures to its everyday use in social life.
The linguistics major/minor allows students to study the mental structures of language (phonology, syntax, semantics) and how people use language in everyday life to organize their social worlds. In doing this, our major provides training in qualitative and quantitative data analysis, writing and argumentation, and a variety of methods for rigorous investigation.
Students participate in research both inside and outside classes, including documentation and analysis of understudied and endangered languages, computational analysis of large data sets, and investigation of the social impacts of language use.
What You’ll Study
- How language is used to construct identities and connect to social groups
- Interview-based, observational, experimental, and computational research methods
- The mental structures of language
- The relationship between language and cognition
Researching at Pomona
Researching Tiriki Grammar
As a research assistant to Prof. Michael Diercks, Evelyn TeSelle ’22 conducted interviews with a language consultant to investigate the function of copulas in Tiriki, a language of Kenya. She helped analyze data and produced an outline of the features and use of these copulas.
I enjoy the social science and humanities side of linguistics, which I don't normally get in other STEM subjects, as languages are fundamentally intertwined with practically everything in society. The interdisciplinary nature of this subject means that you can always find something interesting to you in it.