Overview of types of postgraduate Honours, Master’s and PhD study fields and their value to professional development and careers requiring scholarly  knowledge and competencies  of African languages.

The Department of African Languages at Stellenbosch University has been presenting highly successful programmes of BA Honours, MA and PhD in African languages for the past 25 years. It has become known for drawing students from all over South Africa to study contemporary fields in linguistics, applied linguistics, and literature, specializing in one or more of the official African languages of South Africa. The department’s programmes have also drawn many PhD students from other countries in Africa due to its reputation of academic innovation and excellence in its  postgraduate programmes (Honours, Master’s and PhD).These programmes are  widely recognized in the tertiary sector,  for being  characterized by its academic nature of  local relevance and global impact through exploring the synergies between high quality basic and applied research in African languages literature and linguistics (see Section 3). These programmes equip students with the academic knowledge,  and applied competencies and skills to become creative leaders in their various professional careers relating to language and communication services, and education for African languages in the multilingual context of South Africa and beyond.

The Department’s postgraduate programmes are offered by highly qualified staff who have a proven track record in their teaching, supervision and research. Study of these programmes equip students with competencies for connecting basic and applied research in African languages in pursuing the goal of promoting the status and use of the African languages of South Africa to flourish as subjects of academic study at tertiary institutions and the professional practice of the multilingual contexts  of education, the media, and in language and communication services in the public and private spheres. To achieve these goals, the Honours, Master’s and Doctoral programmes in African languages at Stellenbosch University, as a continuation in advanced progression from undergraduate study (see Appendix), have been designed in terms of offering four specialization areas of study and research (see Section 2), all who have a focus on how quality basic research in African languages in essential to inform quality applied knowledge and competences for addressing the challenges of promoting the African languages of South African in the context of meeting twenty-first century challenges concerning the management of linguistic diversity and sustainable multilingualism in South Africa

For more information about the department:

https://www.sun.ac.za/english/faculty/arts/african-lang/Pages/default.aspx