English Linguistics

Humanistiska teatern

Fotograf: Stewen Quigley

Research in English Linguistics at the department consists of theoretically informed empirical studies. Our researchers have made internationally recognized progress in the compilation and use of electronic text resources.

These text resources are primarily based on computerized corpora of historical and modern English. The corpora are usually available internationally or compiled at the department, often in cooperation with scholars abroad.

Many graduate students have helped to create electronic text collections as part of their thesis project. Corpus linguistic applications have been used in historical linguistics and manuscript studies with internationally recognized results.

Research Areas

The main foci of our research is the structure, meaning and usage of the English language, using a number of methodologies from various linguistic fields, such as:

  • variation studies
  • stylistics
  • corpus linguistics
  • (historical) sociolinguistics
  • (historical) pragmatics
  • language history
  • manuscript studies
  • language acquisition
  • language contact (and language shift)

Corpus-based projects

 

Conference

PALA 2026: The Philosophy of Stylistics

17-22 August 2026

Visit conference website

The PhD programme in the English language is a four-year programme. A majority of our alumni are employed at various institutions of higher education.

  • Dolores Fors
  • Md Nazmus Saqueb Kathon
  • Asia Kulig
  • Niclas Wikström

The English Language unit has had the honor to nominate the following international scholars who, with the support of the Department of English, received honorary doctorates from Uppsala University:

David Denison
Honorary Doctor 2014, Smith Professor of English Language & Medieval Literature, The University of Manchester, UK.

Matti Rissanen
Honorary Doctor 2001, Professor Emeritus in English Philology, Helsinki, Finland.

Douglas Biber
Honorary Doctor 2000, Regents' Professor, Applied Linguistics, Northern Arizona Univ., AZ, USA.

Tom McArthur
Honorary Doctor 1999, Honorary Fellow, University of Exeter, UK.

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