Graduation with Distinction

The Linguistics program offers an honors track leading to Graduation with Distinction. 

Eligibility Requirements

  • Overall GPA of 3.3 or higher 
  • GPA of 3.5 or higher in the major 

Application Process

Students must submit a research proposal to a faculty advisor by the end of the second semester of junior year.

Honors Thesis Requirements

The central requirement is an honors thesis (typically 3-5 chapters with extensive bibliography) completed under faculty supervision.

Special Courses Required

  1.  Junior/Senior Seminar in Linguistics (fall semester) 
  2. Independent Study (spring semester of senior year) 

Evaluation and Levels of Distinction 

A three-member faculty committee will evaluate and defend the thesis. Based on the quality of work, the committee may award: 

  • Distinction 
  • High Distinction 
  • Highest Distinction 

Successful Honor Thesis Projects Include:

  • Bilingual Advertising and Language Choice: Factors that Mediate Bilingual Consumer Response by Renee Weisz (2021)
  • Language and Language Policy in the Former USSR: Norms and Attitudes by Leland Ben (2021)
  • Borders of the Self in the Works of Ingmar Bergman and Andrei Tarkovsky by Anna Dombrovskaya (2021)
  • Transversing Speech Communities: comedians’ use of mock language as a discourse of resistance by Hannah Folks (2021)
  • Women in STEM by Meredith Manson (2020)
  • “Do /ay/ sound Southern?”: A preliminary analysis of the status of the /ay/ monophthong in native Charlottean speech by Katherine Brookshire Owensby (2020) 
  • Doctor-patient discourse in oncology, by Amanda Kahn (2020)
  • “You don’t gotta sell out to reach bigger audiences”: Instagram as a Space for Authenticity Performance and Sincerity by Alexus Wells (2019)
  • French-origin Core Borrowings in Kabiye-French Bilingual Speech: A Study in Number Borrowings by Natasha Derezinski-Choo (2019)
  • The Dynamics of Linguistic Humor Comprehension by Taela Dudley (2017)
  • English as Capital: Language Policy in China and Migration to the U.S. for ESL Study by Becky Chao (2016)
  • Critical Discourse Analysis of Daesh’s Propaganda in English and Arabic by Tara Mooney (2016)
  • Language as a Sign: Basque Language in Constructing a Basque Nationalist Identity by Elizabeth Janicki (2015)
  • Towards an Understanding of the Neural Organization of Language in the Brain by Garrett Berk (2015)
  • Listen here!: Parents’ use of prosodic highlighting in interactions with young infants by Emily Shroads (2015)
  • Gubarev’s The Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors as a Reflection of Soviet Society: Shifts in Nationalist Rhetoric and Perception of Gender Roles 1951-1956 by Maia Hutt (2014)
  • The Effects of Pre-and Perinatal Traumatic Brain Injuries on Narrative Discourse by Emily Hadden (2011)
  • Action and Reaction: Language Policy in the Baltic States in the Post-Soviet Era by Megan Sherrell (2011)
  • Holy Hands: An Investigation of Ritual Gesture Use by Black and White Baptist Preachers in Durham, NC by Jasmine Anderson (2010)
  • Filling the Emptiness of a Stunned Inner Silence: Survivors’ memoirs of Japanese internment Camps in Indonesia during WWII by Lindsay Emery (2010)
  • Vets and Ladies: A Socio-phonetic Analysis of a Community and Its Bowling Alley by Ben Bubnovich (2010)
  • Bilingualism and the Brain: Determining the Neural Regions of Language in Fluent Spanish-English Bilinguals by Erin Luxenberg (2006)