Linguistics

What is linguistics? What do linguists do?

Linguistics is a science at the crossroads of humanities, social and natural sciences. It is a discipline for those who like to have their hands in many fields at the same time – it satisfies the curiosity of anthropologists, historians, scholars of classical languages, biologists, psychologists and others. 

Read comments by Introduction to Linguistics 110 students about the professor, and their coursework.

Linguists do not necessarily teach or know many foreign languages, although it helps, but they ask questions about how LANGUAGE works such as: What does LANGUAGE usage indicate about speakers? How is LANGUAGE related to our mind? How did LANGUAGE originate? Why does LANGUAGE change and what triggers the change? How do speakers use LANGUAGE to advance their position in society? Why do LANGUAGES enter into political conflicts and peace negotiations? And so on. Their focus is on LANGUAGE as inseparable from us, speakers, defining and molding us as we use and change it to suit our needs.

Linguists approach LANGUAGE as a system of hierarchically arranged structures that pattern with meanings. At the same time, linguists readily admit that LANGUAGE is an unknown phenomenon, always in a state of flux, renewing itself from within as well as the outside.

Linguists are ecologists who describe dying LANGUAGES and strive to preserve them. They carry around notebooks to record advertisements, accents, grammatical "mistakes"... and force their students to do the same.

Linguists are interested in the slang of high school students as well as in reconstructing the language of the Indo-European homeland, in literary standards as well as everyday vernaculars.