The Graduate Program in Linguistics (PPGEL – Programa de Pós-Graduação em Estudos Linguísticos) at Universidade Federal de Uberlândia provides academic qualification to researchers and other professionals who study and/or work with languages. Both our Master’s and Doctoral Programs — created in 1994 and 2009 respectively — are recognized for their excellence.

Our program also includes postdoctoral associates under supervision of our professors. Postdoctoral associates work on research, teach classes, and co-supervise theses along with their supervisors. They are also active members of their supervisors’ research groups.

The Program’s Mission

• To promote research that aims to develop Linguistics and its applications, thereby contributing to the investigation and identification of relevant research questions in Linguistics and related disciplines regionally, nationally, and internationally,
• To train professionals of high academic level, thereby improving scientific and technical competence standards in Linguistics and related disciplines,
• To coordinate teaching, research, outreach, and extension activities, thereby enabling the organization of research networks and projects involving language-related questions,
• To promote the dissemination of linguistic knowledge that has a social impact on language-related disciplines and professional areas, including Teaching and Translation.

Research Objectives

Research carried out at the Graduate Program in Linguistics describes, analyzes, and explains how language works with a view to:

1. Understanding how language – as an object of study itself – works at several levels (phonetic, phonological, morphological, syntactical, lexical, textual, and discourse) based on different theoretical approaches,
2. Understanding how language works in various aspects by considering it in interface with the fields of Teaching, Translation Studies, Publishing, Computer Science, Neuroscience, Journalism, Literature, and Arts.

Research Topics at PPGEL

• Beliefs, experiences and motivations of teachers and students regarding language teaching and learning
• Discourse controversies and social dynamics
• Expertise and cognition in writing, translation, interpreting, reading, localization, post-editing, and related processes
• Institutional policies and pedagogical and didactic guidelines for teaching language, reading, and text production
• Language teaching and learning in contexts involving technological resources
• Language teaching and learning in distance courses
• Linguistic description of specialized corpora
• Linguistic issues involved in internationalization processes in higher education
• Pedagogical cultures and approaches supporting translation teaching in universities
• Principles of Modern Linguistics
• Prosodic features of speech
• Relationships between language and cognition
• Relationships between language and subjectivity
• Relationships between oral and written data
• Relationships between speech production and circulation
• Relationships between verbal and nonverbal communication
• Studies on new literacies, multiliteracies, and critical literacy
• Syntactic processes in Brazilian Portuguese
• Teacher training focused on understanding and building inclusive practices in both school and higher education
• Text comprehension of deaf and hearing people
• Training of language teachers in different contexts
• Translation and management of scientific journals involved in the internationalization of universities
• Written language learning in school and in non-formal education

Research Outcomes

• Conceptual reformulations that contribute to enhancing or developing theories (published in indexed peer-reviewed journals and books both in Brazil and abroad)
• Development of reproducible methods (published in indexed peer-reviewed journals and books both in Brazil and abroad)
• Manuals
• Teaching materials
• Language teacher training and continuing education programs
• Glossaries
• Databases
• Computer platforms
• Pieces of software
• Virtual labs for studying and learning languages