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.

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.