What is Linguistics?

When I tell people I am a linguist, the first question I am inevitably asked is “How many languages do you speak?” And every time I’m asked this question, deep inside a little part of me cringes. In the end the answer is, I speak a few, some better than others, and I’ve studied many more, though I couldn’t speak a word of them to you. The popular opinion is that a linguist is merely a person who can speak many languages, case-in-point Annie Walker, protagonist of the ABC show “covert Affairs,” claims to be a linguist and merits this by stating she speaks 7+ languages. Wrong, Ms. Walker is a Polyglot or a person who speaks many languages well. While many linguists are polyglots, not all polyglots are linguists.

So what is linguistics? Simply put, Linguistics is the scientific study of language and a linguist is a scientist who objectively studies language in the same way that a physicist studies the physical world around us, or a biologist studies the natural world around us, or an anthropologist studies the culture’s of the world, or a Historian studies the past. A linguist doesn’t even have to speak a single language (though its helpful to, and they probably do) in order to study language, in the same way that a physicist doesn’t have to be affected by gravity (though they probably are) to study the physical world.

So what do I mean by studying language? Well the underlying questions linguists ask are “how do languages work and why do they work that way? For instance in English I can tell you that there are 28 letters used in writing, but there are at least 49 phonemes or sounds used in speaking the language: /p, b, t, d, k, g, tʃ, dʒ, f, v, θ, ð, s, z, ʃ, ʒ, h, m, n, ŋ, ɹ, l, j, w, i, ɪ, e, ɛ, æ, ɑ, a, ə, ɔ, o, ʊ, u, aj, ow, ej, oj, aʊ, .../

Going even deeper into the English sound system, what then is the difference between the phoneme /p/ as in “pat” [pæt] and the phoneme /b/ as in “bat” [bæt]? The answer is that a /p/ is voiceless (the vocal folds don’t vibrate during the articulation of this sound) and /b/ is voiced (the vocal folds do vibrate), in all other respects though these two sounds are identical. But then what is the difference between the /p/ in the word “pat” [phæt˺] and the /p/ in the word “tap” [thæp˺]? The answer is that in the underlying phonetic form, there is no difference but on the surface these two sounds in English differ because of their position in the word. At the beginning of a word “stops” in English are aspirated and at the end they are not. From here we could easily continue our journey “through the language Glass” (the title of a book by Guy Deutscher) and never look back if we wished to, as each language is different in which sounds they utilize phonemically, allophonically and in how these sounds interact with each other. Taking a step back to the larger picture though, the study of speech sounds is called phonetics and the study of how they interact is called phonology. I however, tend to be a morphosyntactian. The prefix “Morpho-” comes from the word “morphology,” which is the study of morphemes or the smallest meaningful units of language and aims to understand the building blocks of words and how words are formed, while syntax is the study of sentence structure. Linguists can also study semantics: the study of how meaning is derived, pragmatics: the study of how external factors influence language, sociolinguistics: how language varies across communities, historical linguistics: how languages have changed over time, language acquisition, computational linguistics, neuro-linguistics and on and on, as the field of linguistics is as large as language itself.

There is more to linguistics however than just the theoretical pursuits listed above. Today there are an estimated 7,000 languages world-wide. Is this surprising (how many can you name off the top of your head)? Additionally, only 5% of the world’s population speaks 96% of the world’s languages. Unfortunately, due to many factors both physical (colonialism, genocide, intolerance, naivety, economic shifts, ect…) and natural (deforestation, earthquakes, volcanos, tsunamis, melting polar ice caps, ect…) it is estimated that our generation will witness the loss (or death) of around 40-50% of the world’s languages. This is equivalent to entire species of animals going extinct within the next century. With the death of these languages also comes the loss of much of the world’s history, traditions, culture, and knowledge. Also, the speakers of these endangered languages lose their link to the past, and their sense of identity (think about it: How much is your language a part of you? If you spoke a different language would you be exactly the same? If you were told tomorrow that by law you must speak language X what would you say? How would you feel?) These are losses everyone should be concerned about, even those of us who speak one of the majority languages. In response to this flood of language loss many linguists today also work within the field of language documentation. The aim of language documentation is to create good, long-lasting, multi-purpose, records of as many languages as possible before they’re lost. These records are collected through collaborative efforts between language communities, linguists, ethnographers, musicologists, geologists, biologists, and more. The goal is to collect as much documentation on the language as possible starting with elicited word-lists, sentences, stories, and conversations. Linguists working within this framework aim to collect as much data as possible in as many different scenarios and environments as possible so that a well-rounded documentation can be archived and left behind. By archiving this data it allows for many more individuals to use the collected resources towards varying goals. For language communities and linguists the goals following (or coinciding with) documentation are typically language revitalization, and description. Language revitalization is a community-based project, which aims to expand the environments in which the language is used on a daily basis, and aims to increase the speaker numbers by implementing immersion schools, or language camps to name a few methods. Along side revitalization can come language description, which aims to provide descriptive materials on a language such as dictionaries and grammars. This descriptive work helps insure that an even better record is left behind and forms the foundation of many other works, whether it is a theoretical based analysis of a language, or the creation of textbooks and picture books for a language, or a project on the ecology of a region. Additionally, the creation of descriptive works typically lends a new sense of prestige to a language community making the language feel more legitimate in many cases and thus more likely to be spoken.

To end this rather lengthy (and yet short) discussion on what linguistics is and what linguists do, I’ll only say that language is a beautiful and very complex phenomenon. Language is used everyday and almost nobody thinks about it, but when you do you depth of language astounding. The work that linguists do not only makes it easier for you to learn new languages, but also aids our understanding of human cognitive processes and in creating artificial intelligence, amongst much more. Language is something to be marveled at and yet must also be respected as it is part of us, and aids in our creating our identity. The diversity of language worldwide is part of what makes the world an interesting place in which to live and the accelerated rate of language loss today is something we should all be concerned with. I have below a few links to some interesting articles and web pages that further discuss these ideas.

BBC

The Guardian

ELCat

Living Tongues Institute

Thanks!