Master of Arts in Scottish Ethnology and English Language The University of Edinburgh, UK

This innovative joint honours programme combines two complementary approaches to the study of human culture and expression.

Ethnology is the discipline which studies the culture and traditions of developed societies, while English Language looks at how English has changed over time.

Ethnology is commonly offered in universities across Europe, but this is the only full undergraduate programme of its kind in the UK.

A highlight of the programme is the chance to work with the rich range of materials in the School of Scottish Studies Archives. These materials include thousands of hours of recordings of songs, music, stories, rhyme and verse in Scots, Gaelic and English, as well as in dialects now extinct.

Scottish Ethnology

Ethnology is sometimes described as being at the intersection where history and anthropology meet.

Focusing on Scotland, but also looking at comparative material from elsewhere, our programme looks at the varying ways in which a modern European nation expresses itself culturally.

We ask questions like:

• How do customs, beliefs, social organisation, language, music and song help to create and shape identity in the modern world?
• How do we use and make sense of the past from within our present?
• How can this understanding help us to shape our future?

English Language

The English language has a well-recorded history of more than 1,000 years.

Its changes can be traced through written materials ranging from medieval manuscripts to text messages, and more recently, through recordings of spoken English.

Your studies will develop your knowledge and understanding of:

• The principles of theoretical linguistics
• The way we learn language
• The regional and social variations of language, particularly the English language
• Methods of communication

In your honours years, you can opt to study the Scots language, which has its own rich linguistic and literary tradition.