Undergraduate Program Overview

Undergraduates in Hawaii have many good reasons to study Linguistics - either by majoring in Linguistics or through a certificate program.

• Knowledge about language is more important here than in most places in the country, because of the State's unique diversity of languages - hundreds of languages from all over the world are spoken here.
• Hawaii offers a natural laboratory for trying to understand multilingualism, code-mixing (changing from one language to another mid-sentence), second language learning, language endangerment and revitalization (of the Hawaiian language, for example), and pidgins and creoles.
• Languages are closely tied to cultural, geographic, and ethnic identity, issues that are central to Hawaii's education and politics.

Students at UH who study Linguistics discover that it helps them understand a number of different things.

• how language is used as a means to gain and maintain power
• how it is used to influence people
• how it is tied to ethnic and geographical identity.
• how it is processed by the mind
• how children acquire it

There are many opportunities for undergraduates to engage in Linguistic research, both inside and outside of classes. Aside from the State's natural laboratory, students also have access to the Language Analysis and Experimentation Laboratories, where they can conduct research on phonetics (the details of how speech sounds are produced), language perception, reading, computer models of language, and various other topics. Other library and funding resources are also available.