what is linguistics

what is linguistics

Exploring the Fascinating Field of Linguistics

1. Introduction to Linguistics

The study of human language has a long history in both American and European academies. The position and scope of linguistics overall, as well as the contributions of faculty and areas within it, have varied from institution to university. After pointing to some of these long-term trends in the field, this overview describes the units of our departments: the classroom instruction, seminars, methods courses, apprenticeships through research, and the knowledge students acquire about particular human languages. Ways in which linguistics has become an integral part of advanced undergraduate and graduate instruction in other fields, indeed a basis for interdisciplinary research and study, will be highlighted along the way.

Linguists are interested in the physical, psychological, structural, social, and historical aspects of human language. They study a range of issues, from the meaning of particular words to the structure of whole languages and the different ways cultures and societies use language. This field is founded on the evidence-based study of speech, with a navigational compass based both on human faculties and on what the world languages look like and how they behave. Linguists develop critical thinking, good language skills, and a trove of knowledge about the remarkable diversity of human languages and cultures. The field also aims to impart students with the wisdom of a scientific approach to evidence, detail, scope, and clarity — all pursued in an effort to put the “stupendous impact of language on human existence” within reach of understanding and appreciation.

2. Key Concepts and Theories in Linguistics

The analysis of linguistic structure draws upon the methods developed by research into other cognitive domains, employing empirical methods such as experimentation and naturalistic observation in both the study of language and its relationship to cognition. Theories of language structure are developed based upon the empirical discovery about languages and the way that humans use the pattern of language in speech production and comprehension. Finally, then, linguistics is the product of human cognition. As a field that explores an aspect of human cognition and as a communicative system that has shaped human society, the field of linguistics draws on research and methods from a wide variety of intellectuals and specialists, both within the original, principal division of descriptive, theoretical, and historical research, and outside their traditional sphere of concerns.

Language is one of the most complex and amazing aspects of human cognition and behavior. The field of linguistics, therefore, has emerged over the ages, drawing both on long-standing cultural and philosophical questions about language and questions that have emerged from increasing scientific understanding of the nature of human cognition. The field of linguistics is based on a philosophical trinity of three assumptions. First, it is assumed that humans possess a universal genetic endowment that allows them to express and interpret thought using language. Second, it is assumed that the rules of language are somehow organized in the human mind. Finally, it is assumed that the rules that language follows are organized into a human cognition that is separate and distinct from the other processes of the brain. The field of linguistics involves three distinct areas of research. Descriptive linguistics is used to classify languages according to their structure and to describe the structure of individual languages.

3. Applications of Linguistics in Various Fields

Each of these fields of application is a potential source of significant support and reinforcement for the social position of the discipline of linguistics. But while most linguists would probably vote in favor of all these fields and sub-disciplines of application, this is perhaps far too broad a set of goals to provide a focus for a discipline which, after all, still has some inner structure and individual self-integrating characteristics. The mere fact that it is not easy to construct a disciplinary definition of linguistics which will exclude one or more of the activities just listed does not per se make it a better or a stronger discipline. In fact, it seems to bolster more strongly the argument already advanced that the very pluralism of linguistics constitutes one of the principal barriers to its achievement of unity and, eventually, to any sense of internal identity of the type expected of a so-called third culture.

(4) Forensic applications: applications of linguistics in proving or disproving the consistency of reported speech, the detection of forged documents, and the relationship between language and behavior.

(3) Educational applications: teaching languages – what, how, and why?

(2) Philosophical applications: the contribution of linguistics to the study of the nature of the human mind and to the question of the relativity of knowledge.

(1) What may be called the technical applications of linguistics: language engineering and related practical tasks, pretext recognition, speech recognition, speech synthesis, and language analysis.

Techniques and methods of linguistic investigation have been adapted to and successfully applied in various fields, among which the following are listed:

4. Current Trends and Future Directions in Linguistics

Second, the recognition, driven in part by substantial revision of ideas regarding cognition and the brain, beginning in the 1970s, that the brain is inherently a network entity. While these ideas are being fully embraced by researchers working on semantics, pragmatics, and discourse and text (from work of the 1990s), syntactic and morphological research disciplines are somewhat behind with respect to integrating their findings with contemporary models of cognitive function. Some progress is being made, for instance, in building parallels between biological and linguistic networks, but it is fair to say that the integration is far from complete. A focus on the cultural deployment of networks, the parcellation of existing network functions, and the connection of findings back to existing or novel linguistics research will undoubtedly shape the ongoing dialog in the next few years, and beyond.

Some recent advances in the field of linguistics include first, the recognition of “localistic” models for phonetic, phonological, morphological, and syntactic structures as more justifiable than more entrenched notions of “universality.” This signals an acknowledgement, in some quarters at least, of the value not only of research based on data from diverse and understudied languages, but of more fine-grained sub-divisions of systems. A corollary of this piece is the understanding of the necessity for also valuing “particularisms” present in language.