Linguistics & English Language
This guide to Library and information resources for linguistics and English language has been compiled by the Academic Support Librarian for the School of Philosophy, Psychology & Language Sciences.
Library News and Events
Information about Library news, training, events and service updates.
Resource Lists & Subject Guides
Resource Lists are online reading lists that can signpost you to key reading materials. Some of your courses may have a Resource List embedded in the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) but you can also access them directly. Full details are available on the Resource Lists: Information for Students webpage.
Other subject guides can be a useful source of ideas and information. 
Referencing and Reference Management
Our guide to referencing and reference management includes information on a range of resources resources to help you get your references right and avoid plagiarism.
Finding Library Resources - DiscoverEd
Use DiscoverEd to find books, ebooks, journals, ejournals and more. Sign into your Library account using your University Login to manage your loans and requests.
Databases for Linguistics & English Language
- EthnologueProfiles 7,099 living languages: number of speakers of languages, location, dialects, usage statistics, linguistic affiliations and autonyms. Also provides data on languages which have gone out of use in the past 60 years.
- Linguistic & Language Behavior Abstracts (LLBA)Abstracts 2000 journals worldwide with coverage of books, papers. technical reports, dissertations, book reviews from 1973 onwards.
- MLA International BibliographyCitations to critical documents on literature, language, linguistics and folklore from over 4,400 journals and series and over 1000 book publishers. Also covers monographs, reference works and collections, including working papers, conference papers and proceedings.
Corpora & text archives
PPLS students and staff: please view information for Corpora on the PPLS Skills Centre (internal) Sharepoint site.
- British National Corpus (BNC)A 100 million word collection of samples of written and spoken language from a wide range of sources, that represent British English from the later part of the 20th century.
- English-Corpora.orgStudents can register for free as a 'Non-Researcher' and submit up-to 50 queries per day. Includes access to several corpora, including the British National Corpus (BNC), Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) and Corpus of Historical American English (COHA).
Users can access the University of Edinburgh academic licence for English-Corpora.org on the University network (NOTE (Jan 2023): This is temporarily unavailable). Use the University's VPN service to access off-campus or on your own device.
(Please note: the academic licence for English-Corpora.org is managed by the School of Philosophy, Psychology & Language Sciences (PPLS). Contact the PPLS Skills Centre Manager for more information). - University of Oxford Text ArchiveDevelops, collects, catalogues and preserves electronic literary and linguistic resources for use in research, teaching and learning.
- Linguistic Data Consortium (LDC)An open consortium of universities, libraries, corporations and government research laboratories that was formed to address the critical data shortage then facing language technology research and development.
Some language reference tools
- Alpha Language DictionaryMultiple language dictionaries covering Abenaki to Zulu.
- British Accents & Dialects (British Library)Captures and celebrates the diversity of spoken English of the United Kingdom in the second half of the 20th century.
- GlottopediaA freely editable encyclopedia of linguistics currently being built up by linguists.
- SIL Glossary of Linguistic TermsProvides information in the form of glossaries and bibliographies designed to support fieldwork and linguistic research.
- OLAC: Open Language Archives CommunityAn international partnership of institutions and individuals who are creating a worldwide virtual library of language resources.
SAGE Research Methods
A good starting point for information on research methods is SAGE Research Methods.
It contains content on the steps involved in a research project, including a full range of qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods for the social and behavioural sciences, as well as many methods commonly used in the hard sciences.
Topics: Key concepts in research, Philosophy of research, Research ethics, Planning research, Research design, Data collection, Data quality and data management, Qualitative data analysis, Quantitative data analysis, Writing and disseminating research.
SAGE Research Methods also includes a project planner designed to guide you through a research project.
Academic Support Librarian
Introduction to literature searching for your dissertation
The link below takes you to of a recording of a live session for students in the College of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences (CAHSS) which looks at developing a search strategy, resources available from the Library to help you search the literature and how to manage your search results. Delivered as part of the Library's Dissertation Festival (March, 2021).
LinkedIn Learning
- LinkedIn LearningA high quality online skills development service for staff and students.