Master of Arts in Language and Communication

The M.A. in Language and Communication is a professionally-oriented program within the Linguistics Department at Georgetown University. This program cultivates strong research and analytical abilities in sociolinguistics, specifically discourse analysis (e.g. narrative analysis and cross cultural communication), ethnography, and pragmatics. The program is designed to link these theories to practice in a range of professional fields. Student Learning Goals The MLC aims to provide students with the ability to (a) Identify topics and problems in the use of language and communication that are amenable to sociolinguistic, discourse and pragmatic analysis (b) Engage in critical thinking about different solutions to communicative problems and the ramifications of those solutions (c) Understand the impact of language on communication in the workplace, with possible focus on medical, legal, and business settings. (d) use a specific set of skills required to analyze language and communication, described below: Developing a record of spoken dialogue and social interaction is crucial to analysis. Although researchers always keep audio and video tape recordings of their data, detailed analysis requires a transcription of ongoing talk-in-interaction, including information about prosody (rhythm, speed) and intonation (the ‘melody’ of talk), annotation of non-vocal communication, and indications of simultaneous talk/action (e.g. when utterances and actions start and stop, including overlaps). Since the communicative content of language is not always directly stated, students need to learn the philosophical framework and linguistic tools through which to identify what is conveyed directly (or indirectly), explicitly (or implicitly, through inference). Also important here is familiarity with the face-saving strategies identified with politeness theory, along with their general social distribution and cultural variation.