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Electives: Summer 2026
Need an elective for Summer 2026? Enroll in LING 190: The Science of Speech. learn more →
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Congratulations to the 2026 speech-language pathology admits
Wishing our students all the very best in graduate school for MSLP, and a highly fulfilling career as a communication health professional. learn more →
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Don’t hold yourself back: Looking fear in the face on the road to MSLP admission
“Some of the most valuable experiences that I had as an undergraduate were ones that I almost didn’t pursue because I was afraid of being rejected or failing.” 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
Watch videos of our undergraduate students sharing their experiences at LING:
“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
“My favourite part of this class is developing language games and gaining real-world experience with kids visiting Science World. The course truly brings linguistics to life and you get to see what the science of language is about first hand.”
— Student of LING 350: First Language Acquisition
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 early childhood, how second languages are acquired, and what insights can be gained from computational analysis of language data.
Career options related to linguistics continue to expand as the value of skills in areas such as natural language processing, discourse analysis, practical application of phonetic science, and sociolinguistic analysis is being recognized in our increasingly data-driven world. Linguistics graduates may choose to work in language analytics, big data processing and management, forensic linguistics, ESL instruction, speech language pathology, and publishing.
News and events
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May 06, 2026
Don’t hold yourself back: Looking fear in the face on the road to MSLP admission
“Some of the most valuable experiences that I had as an undergraduate were ones that I almost didn’t pursue because I was afraid of being rejected or failing.” -
May 05, 2026
National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls and Two-Spirit People
May 5th is National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls and Two-Spirit People (MMIWG2S). On this day, we remember the people who have lost their lives to colonial, gender-based violence. -
May 01, 2026
Congratulations to the 2026 speech-language pathology admits
Wishing our students all the very best in graduate school for MSLP, and a highly fulfilling career as a communication health professional. -
April 28, 2026
Semantics of under-represented languages: SULA–TripleA 2026
On May 12-15, four department members of SFU Linguistics will be presenting research at the SULA–TripleA conference at UBC. -
April 16, 2026
Visiting faculty from Barcelona joins SFU Linguistics
Castaño’s research at the Discourse Processing Lab explores continuities and changes in how masculinities are metaphorically framed over time. -
April 14, 2026
MA Project Presentation: Amelia Petch
Amelia’s presentation is titled Many researches but not many informations: Mass noun pluralization in Canadian English. -
April 13, 2026
Becker Colloquium 2026: Lisa Matthewson
“What semantic universals exist? And how do languages vary in their semantics? In this talk, I aim to shed light on these big questions by drawing on the past 30 years of research into Salish semantics.”