Program overview
This major studies the structure of language itself, the rules of its use, and how to apply this knowledge to solve real-world problems. You will learn phonetics (how sounds are produced and perceived), phonology (sound systems), syntax (sentence structure), semantics (meaning), pragmatics (use in context), as well as sociolinguistics (language and society), psycholinguistics (language and the brain), and computational linguistics (language and computers). Core courses include Linguistic Theory, Chinese Linguistics, Second Language Acquisition, Corpus Linguistics, and Language Teaching Methodology. Chinese universities have unique strengths in Chinese language research, teaching Chinese as a foreign language, and corpus construction—for example, Beijing Language and Culture University, Peking University, and Fudan University all have strong faculty and resources. This major is suitable for students who are sensitive to language, enjoy logical analysis, and want to deeply understand the essence of human communication, as well as those who wish to combine language with technology, education, or cultural studies.