"Oh, you're a linguist! How many languages do you speak?" This question is posed frequently to linguists and is inevitably followed by disappointment when the answer is "one" or "three" but never the anticipated "Well, I understand 89 languages but I'm only really fluent in 57". A linguist is not a language-learning phenomenon, but rather someone who is engaged in the scientific study of the world's 4000+ languages.
How Linguists Study Languages
Linguists tap into the unconscious knowledge that all humans have about their language by observing and analyzing how people speak.Their work is focused on one of the sub-disciplines of linguistics.
Phonetics
Phonetics is the study of how language sounds are made and heard. Phoneticians work to determine how humans distinguish between speech sounds and non-speech sounds and how those speech sounds are turned into something meaningful. Phonetics requires training in human anatomy and physiology, psychology, and acoustics. Actors often receive training from phoneticians when learning how to produce an authentic accent for films.
Phonology
Phonology is the sound system of a language; it contains all of a language's sounds as well as the rules for how those sounds can be combined and produced. Phonologists are interested in how sounds behave in a given language and how sound patterns differ between languages.
Syntax
Syntax refers to how speakers put words together to build phrases and sentences. Linguists are interested in learning what syntactic patterns exist in each language and how they differ.
Semantics
Semantics is the study of the meaning of words and sentences. Linguists are intrigued by all of the pieces of information that are stored in a single word and how that information is shared between speakers. Humor that is achieved through ambiguity is one example of how humans use their unconscious semantic knowledge:
- Why wasn't the turkey hungry on Thanksgiving? It was stuffed!
Morphology
Morphology is closely related to syntax but rather than examining phrases and sentences, morphologists go smaller by looking at the structure of words and rules of word formation. For example, the word undesirability contains four morphological units (morphemes): un + desire + able + ity.
Linguists use their expertise in these five areas to answer a wide range of questions about language. Child language development, the existence and nature of animal language, language processing and storage in the brain, and language death are just a handful of the topics to which researchers devote their time.
Careers for Linguistics Majors
In order to study linguistics, students register for courses that interest them at the university or college level. Professional linguists are typically university professors who have completed a Ph.D. and have a teaching and researching career. However, knowledge of linguistics is useful for a broad range of other careers as well:
Speech language pathologists (SLP) work with individuals who have speech, reading, and/or writing difficulties. Linguistic training helps SLPs better understand how language is produced and understood.
Foreign language teachers rely on linguistic knowledge to help students grasp the grammar and pronunciation of new languages.
Forensic linguists can apply their training to the judicial process in a variety of ways, including handwriting and voice analysis, interpretation of legal documents, and assisting witnesses and suspects who have a language-related obstacle, for example, not speaking the local language.
Computational linguists combine their expertise in language and programming to create technology that, among other things, responds to voice commands, produces speech, and converts speech into typed text.
Linguists do not strive to learn languages, but to learn about languages by focusing on one of the sub-disciplnes described above. The primary goals of linguistics are to describe the structure of languages and the differences between them and to reveal how the human brain acquires and processes language.
For anyone interested in learning more about linguistics, a comprehensive overview of the field and career options for linguists can be found at The Linguist List.
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