English Literature and Linguistics BA(Hons)

Why study with us?

• You’ll study at our Falmer campus on the edge of Brighton with its outstanding modern facilities and easy access to the city centre and its well-established arts and social scene.

• Our talented teaching team create a dynamic and supportive environment where you will be challenged and helped to learn and grow. They will guide you to think critically and creatively, develop detailed methods of analysis and interpretation and precisely communicate your ideas.

• You will be able to use skills acquired through this course and enhance your individual professional and personal development by taking advantage of volunteer placements with local community projects and city schools by becoming involved with local events.

• Guest speaker sessions will give you the chance to meet inspirational writers.

• You can submit work to our online journal brightONLINE, join subject-related student societies such as the Literature Society and Brighton University Drama Society (BUDS), and take part in a collaborative anthology and a graduate show.

• You'll gain vital transferable skills including personal organisation, independent research, team working, communication and presentation that you can use throughout your career.

• This joint honours degree provides good grounding for many different industries including publishing and journalism, but equally provides a solid foundation for further study or research.

• There is also the opportunity to study abroad in your third year.

Course structure

Full-time students typically have nine hours of contact time per week through lectures, seminars and workshops. You are also expected to carry out independent study in the form of reading, research and some collaborative work with other students, which is particularly useful for developing transferable skills.

The course can be studied on a part-time basis and offers flexibility to students with family, work and other commitments. Whatever the mode of study, you benefit from a flexible and supportive learning environment that includes personal tutoring and academic support.

There is an opportunity to study abroad for one academic year, with a range of countries and universities to choose from. Students return to the University of Brighton to complete their final year of study.

Our courses are reviewed and enhanced on an ongoing basis in order to make sure that what you learn with us is relevant and that your course enables you to develop appropriate skills. When you apply to study with us, we will inform you of any new developments in your chosen programme through our applicant portal.

Year 1

In year 1, you learn about the different approaches to literary analysis. You also cover the essential topics in linguistics, as you explore language acquisition, meaning and context through the Introduction to Pragmatics module, and word formation and sentence structure through the Morphology and Syntax module.

Modules

• Narrative and Narratives

  This module acts as a bridge from your earlier experiences of reading narrative texts and will encourage you to reflect on those early experiences. You will be introduced to a variety of narrative texts and genres (including early forms such as fairy-tales and myths) and to key issues in narrative theory. The module offers you an awareness of narrative as central to being human and allows you scope to explore narratives in creative and personal as well as critic always in a journal.

• English Poetry in Context

  This module will enable you to build on your earlier educational experiences of poetry and to extend your appreciation of and critical confidence with the mode. You will examine a diverse range of British poetry, analysing poetry and its responses to socio-historical contexts.

• Literature and Theory

  This module will introduce you to the key philosophical and theoretical approaches to the reading of literary texts, and situates that knowledge within a historical overview of literary criticism. By the end of the module you will be able to apply theoretical vocabulary and knowledge of critical concepts in the interpretation of literary works.

• General Linguistics 1: Phonetics and Phonology

  In this module you will develop your understanding of phonetics and phonology. In phonetics, you will study physical properties of speech sounds and of the articulatory mechanisms used in speech production and perception. In phonology, you'll study the systematic use of sounds in language. By the end of the module you will be able to describe phonetic and phonological processes from a variety of the world’s languages, as well as undertake basic phonetic and phonological analysis in a range of languages, and transcribe a wide variety of sounds.

• General Linguistics 2: Morphology and Syntax

  In this module you will develop your understanding of morphology and syntax. Descriptive analysis in the two branches of linguistics will enable you to examine how different natural languages can be, by illustrating a range of morphological and syntactic features.

• Introduction to Pragmatics

  This module is an introduction to the study of meaning in linguistics. You will explore the key concepts in pragmatics – the study of language in use. These concepts include: the nature of context and the difference between context-dependent and context-independent meaning; Gricean non-natural meaning and ‘saying versus ‘implicating’; generalised conversational implicatures; speech act theory; non-literal language and tropes; relevance theory; contextualist approaches, pragmatics and mental architecture.

Year 2

Year 2 enables you to further explore the links between the two subject areas. For example, you will have opportunities to work with nineteenth and twentieth century literary texts while considering how spoken and written texts vary in their form and message.

Modules

• The Nineteenth Century in Literature
• British Literature and Twentieth-century History
• Mind and Language
• Deconstruction: Language, Theory, Society

Options*

Two from:

• Studying Travel Writing
• Twentieth-century Literary Experiments
• Early Modern Literature
• Literature in Practice
• Sign Language Linguistics
• Regional Englishes
• Introduction to Journalism
• Television Studio Production
• Image and Text: The Language of Comics and Graphic Novels
• American Literature 1850–1960
• Creative Writing: Process and Craft
• Multilingualism
• Writing for Stage, Radio, Screen
• Introduction to Journalism
• Photography: From Painting with Light to Zeroes and Ones
• Documentary Filmmaking: Theory and Practice
• Contested Stories 

You can also choose option modules from across our humanities and arts subjects. 

*Option modules are indicative and may change, depending on timetabling and staff availability.

Final year

The final year represents the culmination of the degree, where your skills and knowledge are consolidated in the dissertation project. You can choose from a range of literature and linguistics modules according to areas of personal interest.

Modules

• Dissertation

Options*

Four (at least one literature-related and one linguistics-related module) from:

• Pragmatics, Meaning and Truth
• Language, Philosophy, Mind
• Non-truth-conditional Semantics
• Russian Literature and Culture
• Literature and the World Wars
• Conflict, Migration, Borders
• Women's Writing and Feminist Theory
• Restoration Dramas
• Gothic: Texts and Contexts
• Victorian Sexualities
• Brighton Rocks: The City in Literature and Film
• Writing the Contemporary
• Post-war American Literature
• Postcolonial Literatures
• European Literatures and Film
• Adaptations
• (Re)viewing Shakespeare
• Literature and Philosophy
• Apocalypse, Utopia, Dystopia
• Culture Wars: Revisiting the Great Divide
• Community Placement: Theory in Practice
• Creative Writing Project
• English Language Teaching
• Public Journalism
• Popular Culture
• From Script to Screen
• Media, Ethics and Conflict
• Approaches to Study of Meaning
• Language, Culture and Ideology
• Language of Gender and Sexuality
• Conversation Analysis
• Language in the Law
• Policy and Planning
• Images of War
• The Camera and I: Personal Documentary

You can also choose option modules from across our humanities and arts subjects.

*Option modules are indicative and may change, depending on timetabling and staff availability.

Hear what our students have to say about their experiences of the Community Placement module.

International requirements

We can help you meet our English language or academic entry requirements.

Course fees

Info

The fees listed here are for full-time courses beginning in the academic year 2019–20.

Further tuition fees are payable for each subsequent year of study and are subject to an annual increase of no more than 5% or RPI (whichever is the greater). The annual increase for UK/EU students, who are subject to regulated fees, will increase no more than the statutory maximum fee.

You can find out more about our fees in the university's student contract and tuition fee policy (pdf).

The tuition fee you have to pay depends on a number of factors including the kind of course you take, and whether you study full-time or part-time. If you are studying part-time you will normally be charged on a pro rata basis depending on the number of modules you take.

What's included in the fee?

When costs such as health or DBS checks, or use of specialist materials are incurred as a mandatory requirement of the course they are included in your tuition fee.

You may incur additional costs depending on the optional modules or activities you choose. The cost of optional activities is not included in your tuition fee and you will need to meet this cost in addition to your fees. Before you apply check with the school that provides your course using the contact details in the Find out more tab (at the end of this page) for advice about what is included and what optional costs you could face so you can budget accordingly.

See our finance pages for advice about funding and scholarships as well as further information about fees and advice on international and island fee-paying status.

Local area

Campus where this course is taught

Accommodation

Maps

Accommodation

University building

Falmer campus