Skip to content Accessibility statement
🎉 Welcome to our new look website
We would love to know what you like about it and anything we can improve. Learn more about the redesign and share your feedback.

Department of Language and Linguistic Science

Innovative modern language studies. Global expertise in linguistics.

An academic helping a student with work in the forensics lab.

Study with us

Our expertise spans the arts, humanities and sciences. We offer courses in modern languages, English language and linguistics.

Our courses will prepare you to understand languages and cultures, as well as succeed in a range of careers.

Discover our courses

Find scholarships and funding

Research

Two students carrying out research with an academic in the speech lab.

We're driven by what language is, and every aspect of it. Researching it allows us to unravel the complex web of communication and thought.

Our interdisciplinary research has a range of applications in health, social justice, equality and the legal system.

Explore our research

In the Department of Language and Linguistic Science - or LLS, as we fondly call it - you'll be taught by colleagues who are world-renowned experts in their respective fields. We are passionate about linguistic research and about language teaching.

Professor Monika S. Schmid, Head of Department

and top 10 in the UK for linguistics (QS World University Rankings 2025).
for the quality of our research in linguistics - according to the Times Higher Education’s ranking of the latest REF results (2021).
4th in the UK
for French (Complete University Guide 2026).
Dedicated facilities
We have specialist labs to study speech, forensics, psycholinguistics, translation and interpreting.

News

News

12 June 2025

York is ranked 4th in the UK for French, 5th in the UK for linguistics and 6th in the UK for Iberian languages in the latest release of the Complete University Guide league tables (2026).

News

8 April 2025

One of our final-year undergraduate students, Ariana Dubov, has been awarded a commendation in the Spanish section of the University of Warwick Undergraduate Translation Prize 2025 for her translation of an excerpt from Bibiana Candia's Azucre.Una epopeya.

News

8 April 2025

In October 2021, Géraldine Enjelvin, Yumi Nixon and Ulrike Wray (The Kamishibai (紙芝居) team) recruited their first student volunteers via the University’s Handshake platform and introduced them to Kamishibai via master-classes.

News

14 March 2025

Linguistics at York placed 9th in the UK and 99th in the world according to the latest release of the QS World University Rankings by subject (2025).

Events

There are no events to show here right now. Please check back another time.

Information for...