Language Degrees Online

The Doctor of Philosophy degree in English at LSU is designed to help students develop high-level, theoretically informed, professional skills in research, reading, writing, editing, and teaching in a range of language-related areas, and to develop expertise in at least one of those areas. We hope to prepare students for careers in college and university teaching and for careers requiring similar professional skills. All students must complete the program within 7 years of entrance into the program.

Note on Internal Admission
Students initially entering the MA or MFA programs must be formally admitted to the PhD program. They will be reviewed early in the spring semester, on a strictly equal basis with other applicants, for admission and financial aid. Such students should apply for admission no later than 25 January to begin the PhD program the following Fall semester. They should complete the department’s application form, with writing sample and statement of purpose, but need not apply to the Graduate School.

ENGLISH

The Master of Arts in English is a broad program of study designed to help students develop professional-level skills in research, reading, writing, and editing in a range of language-related areas. The Department of English offers the MA degree with both thesis and non-thesis options. Both options require an oral Final Examination. Full-time graduate students normally complete the program in two years. The program must be completed within five years of entrance into the program.

Course Work

The courses you select as an MA degree student should help you attain a broad and well-grounded knowledge of the major literary genres of English and American literary history. They should also help you achieve competence in critical approaches and scholarly methods. Non-thesis-option students take 30 hours of course work. Thesis-option students take 24 hours of course work plus 6 hours of Thesis Research (ENGL 8000). (Note: students who plan to enter a PhD program should be aware that MA thesis hours may not count toward the course-work requirements for a PhD program. They do not count toward the 48 hours of course work required for our own PhD, for example.) In general you will take your courses within the English Department at the 7000 level. You may also take:
A very few English courses at the 4000 level with the consent of both your advisor and the DGS (e.g. some courses in linguistics and Old English).
English courses at the 4000 level offered during Summer sessions.
Related graduate courses in other departments (6 hours maximum) with the consent of your advisor and the DGS.

In no case can more than half of the course work counted toward the degree come from courses below the 7000 level.

Course Requirements:

At the M.A. level, there are three tracks with different course requirements for each track. Every student entering at the M.A. level will be required to take the Graduate Proseminar (ENGL 7020) and period distribution requirements, which refer to the following five historical periods of Anglophone literature and culture: 1) before 1500, 2) 1500-1660, 3) 1660-1800, 4) British after 1800, 5) American after 1800. Students who wish to teach English composition courses must take ENGL 7915 during the semester they are assigned their first composition course.

Track 1: Literary Studies
Graduate Proseminar (ENGL 7020), two graduate courses from different periods not included in the area of concentration, three graduate courses from an area of concentration (British, American, Ethnic & Postcolonial, Southern Studies, African-American Studies, or Medieval and Renaissance Studies). Students who choose Literary Studies as their track must thus take at least one course in three of the five designated periods.

Track 2: Writing & Culture
Graduate Proseminar (ENGL 7020), two graduate courses from different periods, three graduate courses from an area of concentration (Cultural Studies, Women’s & Gender Studies, Rhetorical Studies, or Composition Studies).

Track 3: English Linguistics
Graduate Proseminar (ENGL 7020), two courses in historical views of the English Language (ENGL 4711 and ENGL 7711), and at least 3 courses in Linguistics. (If a student has taken ENGL 4711 as an undergraduate, he or she can take ENGL 7711 twice when the topic varies, or get permission from the DGS to take a different course.)

Special Note for M.A. Students Interested in Pursuing a Ph.D. at L.S.U.: For students going on to the Ph.D. Program, the Ph.D. Qualifying Procedure (described below) will take the place of the MA Final Examination. In practice, there is no difference between the MA Examination and the Qualifying Procedure except that the Qualifying Procedure Committee will review past coursework and recommend further coursework as well as determine foreign language requirements for the student who passes.

M.A. Options:
1. Non-Thesis (or Portfolio) Option requires 30 hours of coursework.
Non-Thesis MA Final Examination: Students will present a portfolio that includes a selection of three to four essays from their M.A. coursework, at least three of which should be term projects of average article length. This selection should represent the student’s best written work and may be revised, under the direction of a professor, before submission to the committee. All course syllabi should be included. The portfolio should be submitted to committee members at least two weeks in advance of the actual examination.
The student will give a presentation that is identical to the student presentation in the Qualifying Procedure (see below). Discussion in the examination can refer to material covered in the student’s graduate coursework as well as to material deemed important in determining the student’s general competence. The exam should be scheduled for two hours.
The Examining Committee shall be comprised of three faculty members chosen by the student and approved by the Director of Graduate Studies; the student should have taken courses with at least two of the committee members.

The examination committee will conduct an oral Final Examination of one to two hours. You may take this exam no more than twice. If you fail your second attempt, you are considered terminated from the program at the end of the examination semester. You have the right to petition for reconsideration.

2. Thesis Option
In addition to your 24 hours of course work and in conjunction with your 6 hours of English 8000 (Thesis Research), you must write and defend a thesis. The members of your Thesis Committee supervise and assist you in your work and approve the final draft of your thesis, which should be a substantial work of original scholarship and criticism, typically 50-100 pages in length. Visit the Graduate School office the semester before the semester you plan to graduate for deadlines and procedures concerning requests for a Final Exam and submitting the thesis to your committee.

An oral Thesis Defense before your committee constitutes your Final Exam. Theses may be formally submitted to the Thesis Committee no more than twice for defense. All members of your committee must agree to pass your thesis. If your thesis is not approved at the second submission, you are considered terminated from the graduate program at the end of the examination semester. MA thesis students may not petition for a third submission.

Thesis MA Final Examination: This procedure is exactly the same as the Non-Thesis Masters Examination except that instead of a portfolio of essays from coursework, the student will submit a thesis. Thesis students should also submit their course syllabi.

After your successful thesis defense, submit the approved and corrected thesis (including any corrections required by the Graduate School) to the Graduate School. Note the often surprisingly early deadlines in the LSU General Catalog’s Academic Calendar.

Switching Options
Students may switch options (thesis or non-thesis) only once. Since the decision on approval of such a change may be affected by financial-aid regulations, the English Department’s Graduate Committee must review students’ financial aid credentials. Regardless of whether students stay in one option or move to another, they have a total of only two chances to be passed by their committee(s) for the MA degree. For example, a student whose thesis is rejected by his or her committee may subsequently request to switch to the non-thesis option, but such a student is expected to pass the oral examination the first time; if not, he or she will ordinarily be terminated from the program.

Students apply for admission to the Doctoral Program in Linguistics after they have completed a Master’s degree in Linguistics or a closely related field. The student selects an advisory committee of four Graduate Faculty members, including at least three from the Linguistics Program. The fourth member may be from the Linguistics Program, or from another department. The student typically chooses one member of the committee who agrees to act as the student’s advisor. The student and advisory committee structure a Program of Study that includes a total of 72 semester hours containing 60 hours of coursework and 12 hours of Dissertation Research. The 60 hours of coursework may contain linguistics course hours from the student’s Master’s Degree. The Graduate School must approve the program of study.

The current requirements for progress towards the degree are as follows. When the student has completed the coursework specified in the Program of Study, he or she takes a General Examination. This examination includes both written and oral defense components and is intended to demonstrate the student’s breadth and depth of knowledge in areas contained in the Program of Study. The examination is written and judged by the student’s advisory committee.

Having successfully passed the General Examination, the student starts work on a dissertation under the direction of one of the members of the advisory committee. The student works with the dissertation advisor to construct a proposal that typically includes an Introduction, Review of Literature, and detailed Methods to be followed in the proposed study. The advisory committee meets with the student to make suggestions regarding these aspects of the student’s dissertation project.

The student completes the dissertation research project with direction from the dissertation advisor. The document is then submitted to the full committee for evaluation. The student orally defends the dissertation in a meeting of the full committee. The Dean of the Graduate School assigns a representative to take part in this examination process.

asters

Requirements for admission to the Master’s Program include an earned B.A. or B.S. and a score of 1000 on the GRE Exam (Verbal + Quantitative). Immediate entrance into the Doctoral Program requires that the student either hold a M.A. degree in Linguistics or a closely related field, or that the student hold a B.A. in Linguistics with distinction. Otherwise, the student must enter at the M.A. level.

All graduate students in Linguistics at LSU must take the following five core courses:

ENGL/LING 4710 Introduction to Linguistics (3 credits). Introduction to the major fields of linguistic study: phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics.

COMD/LING 4150 Phonetics (4 credit hours: 3 hours lecture and 1 hour lab).
Principles of phonemics; articulatory phonetics; description and classification of sounds; transcription at different levels of detail; production and perception.

ENGL/LING 4714 Phonology (3 credits) Introduction to phonology, concentrating on the English language; phonetic and phonemic inventories; feature analysis and rules; examination of linear, non-linear and metrical paradigms.

ENGL/LING 4715 Semantics (3 credits) Approaches to the study of meaning: theories of the lexicon, word-formation and meaning; the interaction between sentence structure and signification; pragmatics.

ENGL/LING 4713 Syntax (3 credits) Basic principles of syntactic structure; topics include constituency, subordinate clauses, coordinate structures, question formation, topicalization and the passive.

REQUIREMENTS FOR THE MA PROGRAM:
The M.A. requires 36 credit hours of courses, including the five core courses listed above; further courses should be chosen from among approved elective courses. Half of the required 36 credit hours must be at the 7000 level or higher. To complete the program, students pursue either a thesis option or an exam option. Under the exam option, the student takes a written exam set by a committee of three faculty members, followed by an oral exam before the committee, covering material on the written exam. Under the thesis option, the student writes a Master’s thesis and defends it during an oral exam before a committee of three faculty members. Under this option, 6 of the 36 hours required for the degree will be LING 8000 (Thesis Research).

The Linguistics Program offers a minor in linguistics at the undergraduate level (18 hours) that can be combined with any major field of study at the university.

Who might want to minor in Linguistics?
Students who are majoring in anthropology, communication sciences and disorders, computer science, education, English and other modern languages, psychology, or sociology might choose to minor in linguistics. In addition, business, general studies, history, international studies, mass communication, political science, pre-law, or women’s and gender studies majors who have a particular interest in language might find a minor in linguistics valuable.

Undergraduate Minor in Linguistics
The undergraduate minor in linguistics consists of 18 semester hours; at least 9 semester hours must be outside the major and 9 hours must be at the 3000 level or above. Course requirements are as follows:
One of the following introductory courses in linguistics:
COMD 2050 (Introduction to Language)
ANTH 3060 (Introduction to Anthropological Linguistics)
ENGL 4710/LING 4710 (Introduction to Linguistics)
One of the following core courses in linguistics:*
COMD 4150/LING 4150 (Phonetics)
ENGL 4713/LING4713 (Syntax)
ENGL 4714/LING 4714 (Phonology)
ENGL 4715/LING 4715 (Semantics)

Electives selected from two of the three concentrations areas below.

Language and Society: Language use across socio-cultural contexts and the relationship between language and culture.

ANTH 4060/LING 4060 (Language and Culture)
ANTH 4064/LING 4064/FREN 4064 (Pidgins and Creoles)
ANTH 4082 (Social and Cultural Anthropology)
** ANTH 4997 (Special Topics in Anthropology)
ENGL 3310 (Historical Perspectives on Language Issues)
ENGL 3716 (Dialects of English)
ENGL 4310/LING 4310 (Studies in Language)
ENGL 4711/ LING 4711 (History of the English Language)
ENGL 4712/LING 4712 (Roots of English)
ENGL 4716/LING 4716 (Introduction to Sociolinguistics)
FREN 3080 (French Culture and Civilization)
FREN 3280 (Cajun French Culture)
FREN 4001 (History of the French Language)
SPAN 4001 (History of the Spanish Language)

Language and Cognition: Language abilities across individuals and the relationship betwen language and thought.

COMD 4153 (Acoustics)
COMD 4380 (Language Development in Children)
LING 4750 (Independent Study in Linguistics)
PHIL 2010 (Introduction to Symbolic Logic)
PHIL 4010 (Logic)
PHIL 4011/LING 4011 (Topics in Advanced Logic)
PHIL 4914/LING 4914 (Philosophy of Language)
**PSYC 4033 (Memory and Forgetting)

Language and Applied Linguistics: Applications of linguistics to the teaching of first/second languages and the interpretation/translation studies.

EDCI 4470 (Reflective Practice in Foreign Language Education)
EDCI 4472 (Teaching for Communication: K-12)
ENGL 2710 (Descriptive Grammar of English)
ENGL 3720 (Methods for Teaching English as a Second Language)
FREN 2057 (Introduction to French Phonetics)
FREN 4014 (Introduction to French Linguistics)
FREN 4015 (Advanced French Phonetics)
FREN 4016 (Applied French Linguistics)
FREN 4065 (Louisiana French)
RUSS 4600/ LING 4600 (Introduction to Russian Linguistics)
SPAN 4005 (Structure of Spanish)
SPAN 4062 (Spanish Phonetics)
SPAN 4063 (Applied Spanish Linguistics)

*An additional one of the core courses may count as an elective, but is not considered one of the courses from the three concentration areas.

**These elective courses may be counted if written justification is provided by the instructor and approved by the Executive Committee in Linguistics.

The Interdepartmental Program in Linguistics offers MA and PhD degrees in Linguistics, as well as a BA minor. Student training is not handled by a single department, but instead is supported by faculty from seven different departments. In keeping with LSU’s motto, Students applying to our program should have a strong interest in the use of research to better understand the nature of human language and how it is acquired and used, and to address, and ultimately solve, the complex language problems of modern societies. Our program also seeks students who are interested in language issues that can be studied with the rich linguistic data that Louisiana has to offer.

Background Notes on Swahili

Swahili is one of the better-known languages of Africa, where it is spoken by over one hundred million people, located mainly in the eastern part of the continent. It is the national and official language in Tanzania and Kenya, and now Uganda too and as a “lingua franca” it is spoken/understood in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Somalia, Rwanda, Burundi, Congo (former Zaire), Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Comoros and coastal Madagascar. Recently, Swahili has gotten public recognition in the United States due to its use in translating The Seven Principles of the annual Kwanzaa Festival, that is celebrated in many African-American communities, and its role as the African language spoken in such films as “The Ghost and the Darkness”, “Congo” and “The Lion King” featuring the hit song “Hakuna Matata” – No Problems! Swahili is the only African Language used in the daily translation of the AU.

Among African languages, Swahili belongs to the Bantu Group, which linguists have identified as covering much of Africa, South of the Sahara, thus providing Swahili speakers with a basic understanding of the structure and even some of the vocabulary of the other Bantu languages. Swahili however, does not have a tonal system (where changes in high, low, ascending and descending tones cause changes in the meaning of words) and therefore it is easier to learn for novice students studying their first African language. Swahili ranks seventh among the major world languages

Why take Swahili?

Swahili is a program developed to teach not only the language but also the culture of Swahili, which by extension brings insight into African culture in general. Students may therefore be interested in Swahili for several reasons, among which are:
Fulfill LSU foreign Language requirements
Fulfill some of LSU’s requirements for a major in African and African American Studies (AAAS) or a minor/major in International Studies (INTL)
Satisfy a personal desire to know Africa better through study of one of its principal languages and develop understanding of Africa’s cultural linkage to America
Prepare oneself for travel, study, business or a diplomatic career in Africa
Grow intellectually by learning an alternative way of looking at, speaking and understanding human existence

WHY STUDY SPANISH
Spanish is one of the three most widely spoken languages in the world. In the United States, it is the second language used most commonly among more than 32 million persons of Hispanic backgrounds. Moreover, it is the most popular foreign language studied by North American students in the secondary schools, colleges and universities. Knowledge of Spanish language and culture offers students a competitive edge in such fields as education, business, social work, international affairs, health care, law, library science, translation, media and social sciences.

STUDENT ACTIVITIES AND OPPORTUNITIES
Student studying Spanish at LSU will have opportunities to interact with students from various Hispanic countries. Qualifying students will be able to join the honorary Spanish language society Sigma Delta Pi. Outstanding undergraduates majoring in a romance language such as Spanish can apply for the James M. Smith, Jr. Endowed Scholarship. Outstanding graduate seniors can apply for the Corinne L. Saucier scholarship for the graduate study in Spanish or French.

Four Reasons Why YOU Should Take Russian at LSU:
1. MEET REMARKABLE PEOPLE FROM THE U.S. AND FORMER U.S.S.R
Russian students enjoy unraveling mysteries. They are more adventurous than most. You will enjoy the company of people who are as curious and eager for discovery as you are. A lot of the fun of Russian study comes in expressing yourself in sounds and symbols unlike those of English.

2. PITCHED TO YOUR LEVEL
Russian is a subject few people take up until college. Not many high schools even offer it. In Russian, no one will “immerse” you in an ocean of unfamiliar words on the first day of class. We assume you have no previous exposure to Russian and realize it’s our job to train you. We start right at the beginning, with the sounds and the alphabet. We take the time to do the job right – at your pace. Much of the first semester is taken up with “learning how to learn a language.” Our proficiency expectations are far lower than those set for the “easier” languages.

3. GRADE RISK IS MINIMAL
We recognize that five credits is a major commitment. To minimize risk to your GPA, the first year grading policy is heavily weighted toward participation. The key to success of our program is brief daily assignments. These assignments are returned the very next day! We encourage rewrites; corrected assignments with improved grades are averaged in with others. It is easy, in Russian, to build a cushion of good grades to offset an occasional blown quiz or exam.

4. RUSSIAN IS TAILORED TO YOUR PURPOSES
Our program is designed for students who are NOT Russian majors. Most of our students come to LSU for pre-professional programs, or for training in science, business or other technical areas. We are here to serve you! Our textbook is selected to provide you with a basic framework of Russian proficiency in a little over one year of study. Then you can focus on whatever is most important to you in reaching your personal and professional goals:
Scientific Russian for a semester at an Institute of Chemistry or Business or Theatre and Film, through LSU’s exchange program (administered by the LSU College of Agriculture)
Introduction to Literature, because you’ve always wanted to know what Tolstoy, Chekhov or Dostoevsky was really saying.
Conversational Russian, because you know that if you want to close a business deal or just travel freely through the cathedrals and museums of Moscow, it’s best not to rely on an interpreter.

Portuguese is truly international. It serves as the official national language of Portugal, Brazil, Angola, Mozambique and several other smaller countries. The “Lusophone Diaspora” extends around the world and provides an extensive arena of opportunities for those using the language for business, teaching/researching, serving in diplomatic missions, promoting tourism and traveling abroad. Portuguese is a prime example of the Romance Languages and remains in some ways truer to its Latin origin than any other. It offers a rich literature dating back many centuries in Europe and to more recent times Latin America and Africa.

At LSU, after several years of hiatus, Portuguese language courses at the beginning and intermediate levels are once again being offered. There are also plans to organize summer programs abroad for students wishing to combine Portuguese language study with other social sciences.