Norman Yeo: Many students come in not really knowing what linguistics is.
I mean,
they read the prospectus and they find it exciting, but they actually
don't know what it involves and several students find it challenging but
very rewarding when they actually get it at the end of the day.
That's the really fun bit.
Samuel Wood: Before I came to York studying linguistics I didn't really have an
exact idea of what it was. I knew it was the study of language and that
general area, but I was really coming here for the French mainly,
but since I've been here yeah, definitely linguistics is kind of my main focus now.
Emily Higson: I mean it was a bit different. It was a bit more scientific
than I think I had maybe been expecting, but I personally really liked that.
Sam Hellmuth: Linguistics is one of those hybrid subjects. It's officially an
arts and humanity subject and that's appropriate because you're studying
human language spoken by human beings, but it's also kind of a social science as well.
Traci Walker: One of the special things about the way language and
linguistics is taught at York is that you get experience in a variety of
different methodologies for studying linguistics. We have people coming
from a very formal approach where you'll learn things like syntactic trees
and formal logic and also you can learn things about, you know,
socio-linguistics and interactional linguistics. How people put structures of
language to use for them to actually do things and get on with other
people, or have fights with other people, and do all the kinds of things
that language needs to be used to do.
George Tsoulas: Almost every speciality in linguistics is represented and what
is most exciting is the fact that there's an interaction between different
areas. There's always something new to learn from colleagues that look at
things from completely different perspectives, and that is something that
students always find particularly exciting and rewarding and also of course
very challenging, because they are the ones that have to integrate all the
different insights that they get from various perspectives.
Maria Muradas-Casas: I think what brought me to the Department of Linguistics was
the idea of complementing linguistics with languages and that was quite
attractive reason which I came to York.
Norman Yeo: The kind of knowledge you get from linguistics which teaches you
about the structure of a language and its various components like sound,
meaning, and syntax can be very, very helpful. It's not essential to learn
the language while you do linguistics or to even speak a second language,
but it would be fun.
Dominic Watt: The value of studying language and linguistics at the same time is
that the one benefits the other so you'll understand a lot more about the
language that you're studying, the languages, plural, if you also know
something about linguistics; and understanding what linguistics is about is
also massively assisted by studying a language.
Samuel Wood: Even if you don't know what linguistics is I would say definitely
look it up a little bit, but you know let it surprise you. Don't come with
a preconceived idea of whether it will be difficult or whether you'll find
certain things interesting in it because it surprised me.
