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.

Some of our supervisors

Dr Federica Formato

I welcome inquiries from prospective postgraduate students interested in any of the following areas (or intersections thereof):

Language, gender and sexuality (representation and production)
Corpus linguistics
Multimodality
Discourses surrounding racism, sexism, transphobia, and homophobia
Language describing violence against women in the UK and globally

A Master’s student I supervised during the 2019/2020 academic year was awarded the Best Student Essay Prize at IGALA11 (International Gender and Language Association), held at Queen Mary University of London in 2021.

Dr Chrystie Myketiak

Chrystie supervises six PhD students and has three PhD student completions. She is happy to be contacted by prospective students who plan to investigate politics and discourse, likely through discourse analysis, critical discourse analysis, queer linguistics, conversation analysis, or multimodal discourse analysis.

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

Dr Tim Wharton

I have enjoyed working with a number of PhD students on a range of issues: embodiment and metaphor (Dr Alex Golding); the communication of mathematics (Dr Kate McCallum's PhD had a creative practice component); iconicity and sign language (Dr Mary Edward is now a postdoc at McMaster University, Ontario, Canada); the role of prosody in the development of pragmatic competence among L2 learners (Dr Pauline Madella is also a Friends' fan!); using relevance theory to adopting a ‘difference-not-deficit’ approach to language-use among autistic people (Dr Gemma Williams has just published this book); lexical pragmatics and ‘Netspeak’ among Chinese internet users (Dr Chengying Gao, currently based at Wenzhou University, China, and working on a monograph); a dual-route processing model of metaphor comprehension (Dr Mengyang Qiu is currently teaching at Guangxi Medical University in China, but we are doing all we can to get her back to Brighton as a postdoc). Dr Chara Vlachaki recently defended her PhD on relevance, aesthetics and ineffability.

I am currently working with students on cognitive science and sound symbolism (Mat Smith); food design and sustainability (Kristin Bullivant); multilingualism and creativity (Natasha Kennedy); the relationship between language and music (Joe Reynolds - Joe began in October 2024 and is a proud recipient of a Techne AHRC Scholarship). Ana Viatova has also recently won a Techne scholarship to work on bridging the gap between affective and linguistic processing in foreign language learners. She joins us officially in October 2025.

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

Specific areas of enquiry for PhD supervision 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 me if you feel you have a PhD proposal which you think I might be interested in. (And please call me 'Tim', because that's my name.)

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

Making an application

Once you have prepared a first-rate application you can 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 strongly 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.

Fees and funding

Funding

Undertaking research study will require university fees as well as support for your research activities and plans for subsistence 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 2024–25

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 and international/EU 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-time	Part-time
UK	£4,786	£2,393
International (including EU)	£15,900	N/A
International students registered in the School of Humanities and Social Science or in the School of Business and Law	£14,500	N/A

PhD by Publication
Full-time	Part-time
N/A	£2,393

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.