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Becker Undergraduate Award
Deadline to submit: April 28, 2026. learn more →
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Electives: Summer 2026
Need an elective for Summer 2026? Enroll in LING 220: Introduction to Linguistics, the key prerequisite for upper division courses. learn more →
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LING Sweet Sixty Conference
Celebrate sixty years of linguistics at SFU by showcasing your research! Deadline to submit: March 23, 2026. learn more →
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Term Info: Summer 2026
Visit this page for info on office hours, electives, future course offerings and more. learn more →
Hear from our students
“What I love about Linguistics is that language is such a human thing. And what Linguistics does is instead of enforcing or prescribing rules for how people should speak, it describes and seeks to understand how languages evolve and develop and how they work.”
— Student of LING 220: Introduction to Linguistics
Watch video of our undergraduate students sharing their experiences of falling in love with linguistics.
The science of language
Linguistics is the scientific study of language, including language analytics, how languages evolve, and how we use language to communicate. Linguistic research advances knowledge on how we socialize, how we understand or misunderstand one another, and how we use language to interpret the world around us. Areas of study include sounds (phonetics and phonology), words (morphology), sentences (syntax), pattern and variation analysis (corpus linguistics), narratives and conversations (discourse analysis), meaning (semantics and pragmatics) and the study of individual languages, including Indigenous languages.
SFU Linguistics is one of the largest and most diverse linguistics programs in Canada. We offer a wide range of courses about language at the undergraduate level, including a certificate program in the Linguistics of Speech Science. We also offer graduate programs for MA and PhD degrees. The work conducted in our research labs aims to address questions such as how language is acquired in infancy, how second languages are acquired, and how language can be processed by computers.
Career options related to linguistics are expanding each year, as the value of skills such as computational analysis, practical application of phonetic science, and sociolinguistic analysis is being recognized in the increasingly data-driven job market. Linguistics graduates may choose to work in analytics, language data management, ESL instruction, speech language assistance, and natural language processing (NLP). With further education, a student can become an audiologist, speech-language pathologist, forensic linguist, and more.
News and events
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March 09, 2026
LING Sweet Sixty Conference
Celebrate sixty years of linguistics at SFU by showcasing your research! Deadline to submit: March 23, 2026. -
March 05, 2026
MA Thesis Defence: Ha Eun Shim
Ha Eun’s thesis is titled The Grammaticality Status of the Double Object Construction in Korean Ditransitive Structures: an Experimental Investigation. -
February 27, 2026
Britney Dinh-Vu wins first prize in SLC Writing Contest
Britney's winning paper is titled The Wicked Shift of the West: An Investigation on Regional Variations of the Canadian Shift Within BC. -
February 24, 2026
Info session: Print and Digital Publishing minor
Students with lower division courses such as LING 100, LING 111 and LING 160 already have a head start on fulfilling course requirements for the PRPD Minor. -
February 10, 2026
Yves Ferstler joins the Discourse Processing Lab
“I am currently beginning my PhD in Computer Science at the University of Québec in Montréal, specializing in Natural Language Processing (NLP). I found the work of Maite Taboada’s research lab to be very interesting.” -
February 09, 2026
In sync: Integrating and aligning social and linguistic cues
Says colloquium speaker Paul Compensis, “I’m passionate about experimental research, interpersonal processes, and the brain. To achieve a better understanding of dynamic social processes, I combine classical socio-cognitive and affective paradigms with human–agent interaction and psychophysiological measures.” -
January 22, 2026
Progress over perfection: How student athlete Kelsey Loeun stays motivated
“I’m motivated by the process of growth. Wrestling teaches me to stay focused when things get tough, and academics give me the challenge to apply that same persistence mentally.”