My son is a junior this year and is thinking about applying Brown. His passions lie in Languages, Linguistics and Music. He is in his fourth year of both French and Spanish and plans to be fluent in both Languages before college and then plans to learn one or two more in college. He has some Swahili and Hebrew under his belt, but I think his plans are to pursue Arabic and German next. He also loves linguistics and studies that on his own time. He is thinking about a double major in Language and Linguistics (perhaps a minor in music although he really plays for himself and doesn’t plan to make a career of it). Can any of you out there give us any information on the Language and Linguistics programs at Brown? Is it particularly strong/big/small etc. How are the professors in these areas? We would love any and all info anyone has to offer. Thanks!
It sounds like his interests cross over various departments - I would check the various departments of interest and their course offerings on the Brown web site.
My daughter is taking American Sign Language through the Center for Language Studies, and she loves it. It’s a multi-semester course sequence, so she had to commit to the entire sequence. She loves it. Small class size and a great professor. Also, the students meet up independently often to practice. The professor is helping her explore summer employment opportunities to maintain her skills. I get the sense ASL and deaf studies is a small group within the department - other languages may be larger - I don’t know.
Brown also has a residential French house. He may want to check that out. http://brown.edu/Programs/French_House/French_House/french_house.html
Brown does not offer minors - but plenty of music classes and applied lessons.
Hope this helps.
Semiotics comes under a conjunction of art and linguistics. The Modern Culture and Media department at Brown is fairly renowned. Just another option that’s out there.
^^^Also, Cognitive Neuroscience would be a strong department with linguistics crossover/courses. I would look in to that.
The linguistics concentration at Brown doesn’t really stand on its own, it’s a part of CLPS (Cognitive, Linguistic, and Psychological Sciences). Which means, inside of that concentration, it’s treated as more of a science (a la psychology or neuroscience) where you learn how the brain processes language, etc, as opposed to being treated more like a humanity or social science. This could potentially be a good or bad thing depending on what your son wants.
HOWEVER, if your son IS more inclined to studying language in a social sciencey way, DefineHuman is right in saying that Modern Culture and Media is up his alley. It started off being called “semiotics,” the study of language as signs and symbols and how meaning is created, but was renamed somewhere along the line. There are some very cool linguistic-y classes within it. He could also look into taking some comparative literature classes since he’s already fluent in a lot of languages!
He could also take classes in sociolinguistics or linguistic anthropology, both of which are specifically focussed on studying linguistics from a social science perspective-- how language impacts thought, culture, etc. There aren’t very many of these classes offered maybe a couple per semester, but those that are are fantastic. Professor Paja Faudree teaches linguistic anthropology and it’s one of the more popular anthro classes for good reason. She’s fantastic and very, very passionate about language.
As for languages in general, there’s something like 25 offered, which is pretty good for a school of only around 6,000 students. I know they’re capped at a certain amount of students per class which means he’d get a lot of individual attention.
Finally, he might want to think about designing his own concentration. Looking back at what I’ve written, there are a ton of linguistics-oriented classes, but they’re all spread out among different departments. If your son is interested in studying linguistics both scientifically and culturally, he could definitely create his own interdisciplinary concentration, drawing from classes in all of these areas. Something to think about 
Very helpful info from everyone. I will tell him to look into all of your suggestions. If anyone has a recommendation of a specific person he could contact at Brown about this, I would appreciate it. I am not sure if Department heads like to field questions from prospective students or if his inquiries might be more warmly received if directed toward another person at Brown instead…?