French and English Language MA (Hons)

The University of Edinburgh

French is a major world language, spoken in many parts of Europe, Africa and the Americas.

This flexible joint honours programme gives you the opportunity to study French in its global cultural context while exploring how the English language has changed over time.

Combining the linguistic and cultural study of languages demonstrates that you are a good communicator, a resilient problem solver, and someone open to other cultures and new ideas.

Together with your core courses, the options you will take on this programme can help you gain skills in many areas of the arts, humanities and social sciences.

French

Over the course of our four-year programme, you will have the opportunity to acquire near-native fluency in French while gaining the broad cultural education valued by graduate employers.

We will introduce you to the extraordinary richness and variety of the francophone world through the study of:

• literature and cinema
• political history and social movements
• philosophical ideas

Our courses cover material from the Middle Ages to the 21st Century and include specialist options taught by leading experts in key disciplines, including post-colonial studies and gender studies.

English Language

The English language has a well-recorded history of more than 1,000 years, and its changes can be traced through written materials ranging from medieval manuscripts to text messages, and more recently, through recordings of spoken English.

Your studies will develop your knowledge and understanding of:

• the principles of theoretical linguistics
• the way we learn language
• the regional and social variations of language, particularly the English language
• methods of communication

As part of the programme, you can opt to study the Scots language, which has its own rich linguistic and literary tradition.

English Language courses of particular interest to students of French cover:

• the speech sounds of the world's languages
• variation in the languages of the world

Why Edinburgh

As a world-leading festival and capital city, Edinburgh is a fantastic place to study a modern language in its cultural context.

French has been taught here since 1894, making it one of the first modern European languages to be offered at Edinburgh.

Studying over four years enables you to choose courses, including from other disciplines, that match your own interests, expertise and employability needs.

We are unique in Scotland in offering students a full academic year abroad within the four-year honours programme, regardless of whether you spend the year studying or working.