• Skip to content
  • Skip to footer
  • Accessibility options
University of Brighton
  • About us
  • Business and
    employers
  • Alumni and
    supporters
  • For
    students
  • For
    staff
  • Accessibility
    options
Open menu
Home
Home
  • Close
  • Study
    • Courses and subjects
    • Find a course
    • A-Z course list
    • Explore our subjects
    • Academic departments
    • Visiting the university
    • Explore online
    • Online events
    • Virtual tours
    • Chat to our students and staff
    • Open days
    • Applicant days
    • Order a prospectus
    • Ask a question
    • Studying here
    • Clearing 2021
    • Accommodation and locations
    • Applying
    • Undergraduate
    • Postgraduate
    • Transferring from another university
    • The Student Contract
    • International students
    • Fees and finance
    • Advice and help
    • Advice for students
    • Advice for parents and carers
    • Advice for schools and teachers
    • Managing your application
    • Undergraduate
    • Postgraduate
  • Research and enterprise
    • Research and enterprise
    • Research and enterprise organisation
    • Brighton Futures – our themes
    • Centres of Research and Enterprise Excellence (COREs)
    • Research and Enterprise Groups (REGs)
    • Our research database
    • Information for business
    • Community University Partnership Programme (CUPP)
    • Postgraduate research degrees
    • PhD research disciplines and programmes
    • PhD funding opportunities and studentships
    • How to apply for your PhD
    • Research environment
    • Investing in research careers
    • Strategic plan
    • Research concordat
    • News, events, publications and films
    • Research and enterprise news
    • Research and enterprise public events
    • Inaugural lectures
    • Research publications and films
    • Academic staff search
  • About us
  • Business and employers
  • Alumni, supporters and giving
  • Current students
  • Staff
  • Accessibility
Search our site
Communication illustrated by silhouette heads one with cogs another with a jigsaw
Research and enterprise
  • Research organisation
  • Postgraduate research degrees
  • News and events
  • Research environment
  • Postgraduate research degrees
    • Postgraduate research degrees
    • PhD-films
    • Our postgraduate research disciplines
    • Funding and studentships
    • Apply for a PhD
    • Support and training
    • Research Masters
    • Postgraduate virtual events
    • Contact us
  • Our postgraduate research disciplines
    • Our postgraduate research disciplines
    • Archaeology | Archaeological Sciences PhD
    • Art and creative practices PhD
    • Biology PhD | Biomaterials PhD
    • Built-Environment-PhD
    • Business and management PhD
    • Chemistry PhD
    • Civil engineering PhD
    • Computing PhD
    • Conservation Ecology and Zoonosis PhD
    • Criminology
    • Cultural studies PhD | Global studies PhD
    • Design PhD | Architecture PhD
    • Digital media and culture PhD
    • Ecology and environmental management
    • Education Policy and Practice
    • Engineering PhD
    • English literature PhD
    • Environmental communication PhD
    • Film, screen and popular culture PhD
    • Geology and Earth Science PhD
    • Health and wellbeing PhD | Resilience PhD
    • History of design PhD | History of art PhD
    • History PhD
    • Human geography PhD
    • Linguistics and language PhD
    • Mathematics and statistics PhD
    • Media communications PhD
    • Medicines Optimisation
    • Neuroscience PhD
    • Nuclear physics PhD
    • Nursing PhD | Midwifery PhD
    • Occupational therapy PhD
    • Philosophy, politics and ethics PhD
    • Physiotherapy PhD
    • Podiatry PhD
    • Politics PhD
    • Professional Doctorate in Education (EdD)
    • Psychology and Community Psychology
    • Regenerative medicine PhD
    • Sociology PhD
    • Sport and exercise science PhD
    • Sport and leisure cultures PhD
    • Tourism and hospitality PhD
  • Linguistics and language PhD

Linguistics and language PhD

The linguistics research portfolio is evolving rapidly with enthusiastic and dedicated supervision for PhD work in linguistics and related language studies across a number of specialisms.

We offer a stimulating, supportive and rewarding environment for advanced postgraduate study and welcome proposals for PhD work on all areas of linguistics, in particular those with interdisciplinary potential, where you have opportunities to combine methodologies from linguistics with, for example, literature, creative writing, history and memory studies, health care or social science.

Areas of investigation currently or recently pursued by doctoral students include: the pragmatics of the communication of mathematics; the role of iconicity in sign language; meta-representation in the interpretation of Brechtian theatre; gender representation in Algerian school textbooks; intonation and communicative competence in L2 learners; pragmatic strategies and autism; a corpus-based study of gender and cross-cultural politeness strategies in email use.

Current Linguistics PhD and English language PhD students have been successful in obtaining studentships covering both fees and living costs through AHRC techne programme and University of Brighton Doctoral College Awards.

Our linguistics/English language PhD students have gone on to a variety of different roles following the successful completion of their research. These include academic posts as lecturers and postdoctoral research assistants at the University of Brighton and elsewhere, plus jobs in teaching, management, journalism and publishing.

Apply to 'humanities' in the applicant portal

Apply with us for funding through the AHRC Techne Doctoral Training Partnership

Key information

As a Linguistics and English Language PhD student, you will benefit from 

  • desk space and access to a computer in a space specifically designed for research students. There are a range of facilities on the Falmer site include various catering options.  
  • access to a range of electronic resources via the university’s online library, as well as to the physical book and journal collections in the Falmer Library and other campus libraries in Moulsecoomb and in central Brighton.  
  • state-of-the-art research facilities in Watson Building and you will have access to the Creative Methods Lab on the first floor, including access to specialist technical support. 

Academic environment

As one of our students for the Linguistics PhD or English Language PhD at the University of Brighton you will work with dedicated research supervisors, who will help you though the planning and delivery of your research thesis and assist with your preparation towards a career. 

Facilities include our Doctoral College, a supportive and approachable academic community, research training programmes and access to online facilities and library resources from the University of Brighton, London and the South East.

Our Centres of Research and Enterprise Excellence (COREs) and our research groups foster academic engagement across the humanities and social sciences. Locally, lectures, seminars and reading groups are organised by students and staff, and submission of funding bids - and dissemination of conference papers and publications – is encouraged and supported.

We aim to integrate all postgraduate students working on linguistics/English language topics with one or more of our centres or groups, allowing opportunities to present ‘work in progress’ and to network with other researchers. 

We offer the following staff interests and focus as a guide to your application.

Language and language use in a narrow social context

  • The semantics-pragmatics interface
  • The pragmatics of non-verbal communication
  • Psycholinguistics and multimodality (sign, speech and co-gesture)
  • Iconicity in language
  • Pragmatics and prosody
  • Relevance theory
  • Modality and tense
  • Contextualism and evidentiality
  • Sign language linguistics

Language and language use in a wider social context

  • Discourse analysis
  • Sociophonetics
  • World English
  • Historical sociolinguistics
  • Language and gender
  • Language and sexuality (cybersex conversation)
  • Language and power
  • Language in contemporary culture
  • Marxist historical materialism
  • The language of neoliberalism

Some of our supervisors

Profile photo for Dr Federica Formato

Dr Federica Formato

I am interested in supervising students in the following disciplines (or combination of these):

- language, gender and sexuality

- corpus linguistics

- multimodality

- discourses around racism, sexism, transphobia and homophobia

- language describing violence against women in UK and other parts of the world.

Please do contact me if you are interested in spending a visiting period for your PhD research. 

Profile photo for Dr Chrystie Myketiak

Dr Chrystie Myketiak

Chrystie supervises six PhD students, and has two PhD student completions. She is happy to be contacted by prospective students who plan to investigate discourse in order to answer pressing sociocultural questions. 

Broad areas of inquiry might include (and overlap on):

  • desire and pleasure
  • gender and sexualities
  • power, violence, and justice
  • politics of language/political language
  • identities and intersectionality
  • norms and belonging
  • critical discourse analysis/ queer linguistics/ conversation analysis/ multimodal discourse analysis
Profile photo for Dr Jelena Timotijevic

Dr Jelena Timotijevic

Jelena is currently supervising two PhD students who are focusing on Critical Discourse Analysis as an analytical framework for examination of language data.

She welcomes PhDs in the following areas:

  • Political discourse analysis, namely: confilct, protest and social movements; migration studies, discourse of nationalism, using Critical Discourse Analysis, Integrationism, Activity Theory as a form of history writing
  • Marxism and Philosophy of Language, including Vygotsky's Sociocultural Theory applied to the research in Language Teacher Education, namely in the context of the role of emotion and cognition  in language teaching and learning.
  • Intercultural Pragmatics; Contextualism and its varieties
  • Semantics/pragmatics interface and theoretical application to grammatical phenomena, mainly modality, tenses, reported speech. These can be applied to one language, or contrastively.
Profile photo for Dr Tim Wharton

Dr Tim Wharton

Wharton has recently worked with a number of PhD students, working on a range of issues: the communication of mathematics (this PhD had a creative practice component); the role of prosody in the development of pragmatic competence among L2 learners; using relevance theory to adopting a ‘difference-not-deficit’ approach to language-use among people with autism.

He is currently working with students on the role of metaphor comprehension in pragmatic competence among L2 learners; lexical pragmatics and ‘Netspeak’ among Chinese internet users; relevance theory and the interpretation of Anglo-American modernist literature; relevance theory and Greek-English translation.

All of these reflect his interest in territories beyond those linguists and pragmatists traditionally seek to explore.

Specific areas of enquiry include, but are not limited to:

  • Pragmatics
  • Relevance theory
  • Non-verbal communication (including prosody)
  • Expressive meaning
  • Emotions and the communication of emotion
  • Pragmatics and cognitive science

Please contact Dr Wharton if you feel you have a PhD proposal which explores the territory that exists beyond traditional pragmatics.

For further supervisory staff including cross-disciplinary options, please visit research staff on our research website.

Making an application

You will apply to the University of Brighton through our online application portal. When you do, you will require a research proposal, references, a personal statement and a record of your education.

You will be asked whether you have discussed your research proposal and your suitability for doctoral study with a member of the University of Brighton staff. We recommend that all applications are made with the collaboration of at least one potential supervisor. Approaches to potential supervisors can be made directly through the details available online. If you are unsure, please do contact the Doctoral College for advice.

Please visit our How to apply for a PhD page for detailed information.

Sign in to our online application portal to begin.

Fees and funding

Funding

Undertaking research study will require university fees as well as support for your research activities and plans for subsistance during full or part-time study.

Funding sources include self-funding, funding by an employer or industrial partners; there are competitive funding opportunities available in most disciplines through, for example, our own university studentships or national (UK) research councils. International students may have options from either their home-based research funding organisations or may be eligible for some UK funds.

Learn more about the funding opportunities available to you.

Tuition fees academic year 2020–21

Standard fees are listed below, but may vary depending on subject area. Some subject areas may charge bench fees/consumables; this will be decided as part of any offer made. Fees for UK/EU and international students on full-time and part-time courses are likely to incur a small inflation rise each year of a research programme.

MPhil/PhD
 Full-timePart-time

UK/EU 

£4,407 

£2,204 

International  

£14,976 

£7,488

International students registered in the School of Humanities or in the Brighton Business School

£13,194 

£6,597

Professional doctorate
Full-timePart-time

N/A

£2,673 (UK/EU)

PhD by Publication
Full-time Part-time
 N/A  £2,204(UK/EU)

Contact Brighton Doctoral College

To contact the Doctoral College at the University of Brighton we request an email in the first instance. Please visit our contact the Brighton Doctoral College page.

For supervisory contact, please see individual profile pages.

Back to top
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • TikTok
  • YouTube
  • LinkedIn icon

Contact us

University of Brighton
Mithras House
Lewes Road
Brighton
BN2 4AT

Main switchboard 01273 600900

Course enquiries

Sign up for updates

University contacts

Report a problem with this page

Quick links

  • Courses
  • Open days
  • Order a prospectus
  • Academic departments
  • Academic staff
  • Professional services departments
  • Jobs
  • Privacy and cookie policy
  • Accessibility statement
  • Libraries
  • Term dates
  • Maps
  • Graduation
  • Site information
  • Online shop
  • COVID-19

Information for

  • Current students
  • International students
  • Media/press
  • Careers advisers/teachers
  • Parents/carers
  • Business/employers
  • Alumni/supporters
  • Suppliers
  • Local residents