The Philological Society (PhilSoc) was established in 1830 and is the oldest learned society in Great Britain devoted to the scholarly study of language and languages. As well as encouraging all aspects of the study of language, PhilSoc has a particular interest in historical and comparative linguistics, and in the structure, development, and varieties of Modern English.
When I began telling people in Arkansas that I would be coming to Oxford to study philology, I was often met with a follow-up question: “What even is philology?” The term wasn’t one with which many people in the US were familiar; the multi-disciplinary activity of the American philologist had been fragmented and relegated to the faculties of linguistics, literary studies, and classical studies in the 19th and 20th centuries. Continue reading
What first drew me to linguistics was realising that language is far more than the words we use to communicate. Something as ordinary as having a conversation can be looked at through so many different lenses. How we produce and understand sounds, how language reflects the people and communities who use it and how our brains process it. Studying linguistics at undergraduate level opened up all of these different ways of thinking about language. Continue reading
With great thanks to the Philological Society, the Summer School on the History of English (SSHOE) could take place from the 29th of June to the 3rd of July at the University of Cardiff this year. It was kindly hosted by Sara Pons-Sanz and gave students interested in the history of the English language an opportunity to delve deeper into this fascinating topic.Continue reading
Information about funding support available from PhilSoc may be found here
