Undergrad/Postbacc Programs

Applied Linguistics is a social science that studies language as a cognitive, social, and cultural phenomenon. While other disciplines such as communication, rhetoric, and world languages work with language-related topics or specific languages, Applied Linguistics focuses on what language is and how people use it. We study everything from the smallest bits of language (such as sound) to whole texts and complicated multi-person interactions. 

In other words, Applied Linguistics makes overt what we all use and experience but generally don't think about, let alone analyze. Using linguistic analysis and argumentation, we work on major problems that societies grapple with, such as education, health care, law, artificial intelligence, and public policies.

Connections to Other Fields

You can use an Applied Linguistics degree in these fields, get a double major, or combine a major and a minor.

• Social Sciences: The field of Applied Linguistics intersects with psychology, sociology, anthropology, history, and other social sciences as it examines the connections between language and culture, community, social movements, brain development, and more.
• Computer Science: Applied Linguistics provides fundamentals for natural language processing (NLP) and natural language generation (NLG), with applications in speech recognition, speech generation, spoken and written language analysis, language translation, artificial intelligence, and related fields. Courses provide practical skills for working with language in all its contexts. 
• Social Work: Applied Linguistics provides the tools to understand links between language and culture, community, social movements, social justice, brain development, and more.
• Teaching: PSU Applied Linguistics offers courses to develop your teaching skills and prepares you to work with diverse learners. You will increase your cultural and language awareness and enhance your credentials for working with language learners.
• World Languages and International Studies: A Certificate in Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL) extends the value of your cultural knowledge. With the TESL certificate, you will have the skills and credentials to teach English or other languages in the US and around the world.
• Law, Nonprofit Work, Technical Writing, Editing and Related Fields: Applied Linguistics hones your understanding of language use and of the intricate relationship between language and culture which underlies all of these language-related fields.

When I first graduated high school, I had no idea what I wanted to go to college for and was really struggling to find something I was passionate about. Then I discovered I wanted to learn Korean, and I realized how cool I thought language was. So I decided to try switching to Applied Linguistics. From the first class, I was so in love with it. [Before applied linguistics,] I hadn't experienced going to a college class and actually wanting to learn the material. 

-- Sara Scott, BA major in Applied Linguistics