Languages and Cultures Department

The Languages and Cultures Department offers a full four-year program in each of the following languages: Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Russian, and Spanish. The Department offers majors in Arabic and Chinese and minors in all seven languages taught at USNA.

The mission of the Languages and Cultures Department is to produce graduates who possess a fundamental understanding of foreign languages and societies from linguistic, literary, cultural, and geopolitical perspectives. Please visit the Mission page for a discussion of the Department's mission and goals in a national defense perspective.

At all levels, classes are conducted and written work is done in the target language. Acquisition of language and culture is supported extensively by technologies like video and computer-based multimedia wherever appropriate.

Class sizes are small, so that midshipmen have frequent opportunities for participation. The department uses the communicative approach, maximizing language use in the classroom. Midshipmen must prepare class assignments carefully in order to be able to participate effectively. Films, video clips, internet sites, online learning aids, PowerPoint presentations, YouTube videos, speed conversations, online chat groups, portfolios, and journals are among the teaching tools used.

Languages and Cultures faculty members have native fluency in the languages they teach, and engage in research in a number of different fields: anthropology, the literature of many cultures, including cyberfiction, theoretical and applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, corpus linguistics, theatre and cinema, folklore, early book and manuscript transmission, conversational analysis and identity construction, gender studies, and proficiency assessment.