This course covers systematic study of human language. Superficially, there’s huge variation among the world’s languages, and linguists not only describe the diverse characteristics of individual languages but also explore properties which all languages share and which offer insight into the human mind. The study of linguistics draws on methods and knowledge from a wide range of disciplines. For instance, the study of meaning draws on philosophy, the analysis of the speech signal uses methods from physics and engineering, and the study of language acquisition draws on psychology. This variety is one of the things that makes linguistics fascinating: one day you might be poring over a medieval text for evidence of how the grammar of a language has changed, and the next, learning about how the larynx creates sound energy for speech, or how we can record brain responses in a categorisation task. The broad interdisciplinary training we offer provides our graduates with transferable skills that are greatly sought after by employers; for example, students learn to analyse quantitative data, construct abstract grammatical models, and test alternative hypotheses. Linguistics graduates find employment in a wide range of professions, from journalism to banking. Linguistics provides particularly good preparation for vocational training too, in fields such as speech therapy, teaching, speech and language technology (eg developing speech recognition and translation software), law, translation, interpreting, and even forensic linguistics. Familiarity with a range of human languages is also a huge advantage in careers where rapid learning of unfamiliar languages may be involved, such as in the Diplomatic Service.