Inside the department

 The Department of Language and Communication Studies was founded in 2002 when the former Department of Linguistics and the former Department of Applied Linguistics were merged. Today it offers education in a wide range of subjects and hosts research projects in many fields of linguistic studies and communication. Subject areas are formal and applied linguistics as well as linguistics, phonetics, second language acquisition and Swahili. In addition the department offers courses in Norwegian for foreigners. At any given time our students include 250 international students from all over the world.

 Language and communication studies are crucial for understanding cognition, interaction, and culture. In today's society there is a need for knowledge within language, spoken and written communication, and ICT. Through current research in fields such as professional communication and speech technology, as well as gender and ethnicity, our department contributes substantially to interdisciplinary efforts at our university. The department also contributes towards developing contacts across languages and cultures through the study of e.g. Swahili and Norwegian as a second language.