Objectives

Ethiopia follows a policy of multilingualism in education and language use in general. Many hitherto unwritten Ethiopian languages were introduced into the school system as medium of instruction or as a subject; more Ethiopian languages are likely to follow. Therefore, there is an urgent need for the description, codification, standardization and promotion of Ethiopian languages. Therefore, the general objectives of the undergraduate and graduate programs in Linguistics are the promotion minority languages and cultures and the preservation of seriously endangered languages and cultures.

BA in Linguistics

The BA program in Linguistics has the objective to train medium-level professionals who are able to describe, codify, standardize and elaborate Ethiopian languages for modern use, and who are capable of documenting and preserving endangered minority languages and cultures in Ethiopia. Furthermore, the program imparts basic competency for providing consultancy services to organizations that promote languages and cultures, and for creating general awareness about linguistic and cultural values in a multi- cultural society.

MA in Linguistics

The MA program in Linguistics has the objective to raise the level of knowledge of students on the formal and substantive aspects of Linguistics as a science. The program equips students with basic research methods for identifying linguistic units, and eliciting and managing linguistic data (recording, transcription, description, classification, and interpretation of linguistic facts). The program imparts competency for applied research on the hitherto unknown languages of Ethiopia and enables students to develop expert opinions on language policy issues at various levels and to train professionals in the field of linguistics at institutions of higher learning. Furthermore, the program has the intention to initiate and promote collaborative research on Ethiopian languages and cultures with local and foreign research institutions.

PhD in Linguistics

The PhD program in Linguistics has the objective to train high-level professionals who critically assess the state of the art in particular areas of Linguistics and in the study of Ethiopian languages. The PhD program will help the candidate to identify research gaps with regard to languages spoken at the Horn of Africa and their speaker communities, and to conduct independent, high-level research on specific or general linguistic issues, or produce a basic description of hitherto unknown or less-known languages. The research findings should be applied to problems emanating from the teaching/learning processes, and from societal interactions, such as those arising form policy issues and/or their implementations.