Established in 1964, the Department of Linguistics, University of Mumbai is one of the oldest Departments in India to offer a Post-Graduate programme in Linguistics. The Department is celebrating its Diamond Jubilee Year in 2023-24.
The Department is known for the intensive training offered to the students and its research-orientation in both the MA and PhD programmes. The pedagogy followed in the Department is constructionist, highly interactive, discursive. It focuses on imparting transferable analytic and reasoning capabilities to the students and researchers.
The Department is one of the few Linguistics Departments in India which actively engages in linguistic field-work as part of its MA programme. It offers the MA students a unique and memorable experience of working on a language unknown to them by closely collaborating with the community speaking those languages. The Department has analyzed structures of over 30 linguistic varieties, most of which are lesser-known and understudied languages. Several of these languages are spoken by tribal and marginalized communities.
The Department strives to create an exciting academic atmosphere by organizing intensive workshops and winter-schools, special lecture-series and special courses to enhance the knowledge-creating capacity of its students, researchers and faculty. It collaborates with the experts of international repute in the Universities in India as well as abroad.
Moreover, the faculty members of the Department engage in several outreach programmes, and work in close association with school-teachers, educators and education activists.
Programmes offered by the Department of Linguistics are:
- MA in Linguistics (regular, full-time, 2 year i.e. 4 semester programme)
- PhD in Linguistics (regular, full-time programme with mandatory 1 year coursework)
In addition, the Department also offers a part-time course:
- Certificate Course in Phonetics and Phonology : A very popular part-time course, introducing the students to the world of speech sounds, offering ear-training in perceiving the speech sounds and honing the skills of transcribing them using the IPA. This course is being offered in the Online Mode since 2020-21.