Graduate Program

The Graduate Program in Linguistics at USC is comprehensive in its scope. Its mission is to train students to pursue research and teach in a wide range of linguistic subdisciplines. The program strives to develop students' analytical skills and to encourage creative and critical approaches to data, models, and theories. In addition to requiring all students to have a theoretical foundation in general linguistics, phonology, and syntax, the interdepartmental structure of the program affords students the opportunity to take coursework and pursue specializations in a range of subdisciplines that includes: French/German/Spanish linguistics, historical linguistics, philosophy of language and discourse analysis, phonological theory, psycholinguistics, second/foreign language acquisition and teaching, sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology, and syntactic theory . The program's dual emphasis on theoretical and applied aspects of linguistics is one of its major strengths, and the great variety of research conducted by faculty and graduate students is a reflection of the intellectual diversity that characterizes the program.

In addition to offering graduate degrees to its own students, the Linguistics Program also provides cognate or minor field courses to graduate students in a number of other departments. Minor fields of study have been designed and approved (or are being planned) for Ph.D. students in the following programs: Comparative Literature, Computer Science, English Composition & Rhetoric, English Literature, Experimental Psychology, French, German and Spanish literature, Philosophy, and Communication Sciences & Disorders.