Objectives
This is a four-year dual honours course, combining the study of Linguistics and Japanese. Linguistics: Approximately half of your modules will be shared with students on the single honours BA in English Language and Linguistics. This concerns the structure, use, history and acquisition of English, and of natural languages more generally. There are a number of thematic pathways within the degree programme at levels two and three, including theoretical and comparative approaches, language and society, folklore and cultural tradition, and historical approaches to language. Dual degree students may take modules from within any of these pathways with the opportunity to study, for example, syntax, phonetics, sociolinguistics, language and gender, Middle English, and child language acquisition. The course structure on the linguistics side of the degree is relatively fixed at level one: you will take 40 credits of linguistics modules, including Sounds and Structures of English (20 credits combined), plus one of the following (History of English, Doing Linguistics, and Varieties of English). You may take additional English Language and Linguistics modules to make up your 40 unrestricted credits. Level one modules are intended to provide a foundation in linguistic theory and analysis, and to introduce you to topics that you may wish to explore in more depth at levels two and four. The course structure in your subsequent years is extremely flexible: you will choose approximately 50% of your modules (60 credits per year) from any of the modules offered at each level. This allows you to pursue your specific interests in linguistics and at the same time to integrate your linguistic studies with your developing interests in Japanese Studies. Japanese Studies: The core modules for Japanese Studies cover East Asia as a whole, and you can also take any of the single-country modules offered by the school. We encourage you to take either an East Asian language option or modules in a subject such as politics, economics or sociology. The Japanese side of the course combines intensive study of the Japanese language with a selection of lecture-based modules on Japan and East Asia. You will spend your third year overseas at one of our partner universities in Japan. This provides you with an excellent opportunity to enhance your language skills and to immerse yourself in Japanese society. The language is taught intensively from scratch, covering all the basic skills: speaking, listening, reading and writing. You learn phonetic scripts (kana) from the outset, and learn the roughly 2000 Sino-Japanese characters (kanji) needed over the four years of the course. You encounter over a quarter of these in the first year. By the end of the first year you will have covered most of the core grammar of the language, and from the second year of the course you start to deal with real texts, including newspapers, and you develop compositional, summary, translation and presentational skills. The lecture-based modules cover a range of disciplines. The main focus is on contemporary social sciences, so you can choose modules on contemporary society, minorities, politics, economics, gender, modern history, business management and international relations. There are also some literature-based options, including both modern literature and the pre-modern language. The School of East Asian Studies is one of the main centres for Japanese in Europe, and is one of two universities' departments that constitute the National Centre for Japanese Studies.
