Department of English Linguistics
The objective of our Department is to teach the structural and functional properties of language through theoretical and practical courses , and to prepare our students for future as productive individuals who can think critically, do researches, and use both Turkish and English successfully.
The history of the Department goes back to 1972 when it first started as a subprogram of the Department of English Language and Literature at Faculty of Social and Administrative Sciences. Upon the reconstruction of higher education system by YÖK (Council of Higher Education) in 1982, it was reconstructed as a division of the Department of Western Languages and Literatures at Faculty of Letters. Since 1994, it has been an independent department at the same faculty and is known to be the first and only linguistics program using English as a medium of instruction. Distinguished with its contributions in making linguistics as a firm branch of social sciences in Turkey, the Department keeps on studying both English and Turkish languages with a scientific perspective and is proud of the students it has educated at undergraduate and graduate programs.
About Linguistics..
Linguistics is a branch of science which investigates the systematic structure, social and individual characteristics of the most fundamental and widely used means of communication, that is, human language from both theoretical and applied perspectives. As a result of continuing advances in science, modern linguistic investigations are now carried out within a variety sub-branches and language phenomena are studied also from broader perspectives of interdisciplinary attempts.
Departments of Linguistics and Departments of "Language and Literature" at universities differ from each other in certain ways concerning their interests in the study of language: Generally speaking, Departments of Language and Literature deal with the historical changes a certain language has undergone with its period-specific characteristics and make an extensive use of the analyses of written documents and literary texts in this context. They place particular emphasis on works of literature. Whereas in Departments of Linguistics, human language is taken as a subject matter on its own with its both historical and contemporary characteristics. While investigations can be carried out on the basis of written and oral examples of language use, they can also be carried out on a comparative basis in regard to different languages or in regard to universal features of the human language. more..