Concentrations and Courses of Study

    The most likely areas for Ph.D. primary specialization in Linguistics are: historical linguistics, second language acquisition/ESL, and sociolinguistics.  It is in these areas that the program has the greatest strength.  The program faculty lists six members who work on aspects of historical linguistics, ten faculty who are experts in second language acquisition and/or applied linguistics, and six whose research involves aspects of sociolinguistics/anthropological linguistics/pragmatics.  In addition to this, the program has seven faculty who have a primary or secondary research specialization in phonetics and/or phonology, and five who specialize in syntax and/or semantics.  Ph.D. students are required to select two special fields of study, and typical combinations might be second language acquisition & phonology, sociolinguistics & second language acquisition, or historical linguistics & syntax.

    In addition to Linguistics and its subdisciplines, the Linguistics Program at USC is developing options for interdisciplinary training such as are typically unavailable in more traditional departments.  Our program's Ph.D. requirements allow a secondary field to consist of courses taken in one of the participating departments.  Accordingly, a student who anticipates teaching in a department of foreign languages and literatures may take a secondary field in French or Hispanic literature.  A student pursuing interests in ESL writing might consider a secondary field in English Composition and Rhetoric.  A student who is interested in the interface of Linguistics and other cognitive sciences could take a secondary field in Experimental Psychology, Philosophy, or Speech Pathology.  Some of these interdisciplinary minors have already been developed, while others are awaiting approval from the cooperating programs.  The list below depicts the full range of secondary specializations that the Program hopes eventually to be able to offer, along with comments about their relevance to an academic career.  Those that are linked have been approved and are in place.

Linguistic Anthropology:

A student interested in the linkages between language and culture might find this to be an appropriate secondary field.  This minor field might be effectively combined with sociolinguistics or discourse analysis, among other things.

The following areas represent disciplines which might be grouped with Linguistics under the heading Cognitive Science, and would be appropriate for a student whose interests in cognition extend beyond the traditional domain of Linguistics:

Computer Science