Department of Sociology

What is Linguistics?

Linguistics is the study of language in all its manifestations. The various subfields of linguistics rely on close connections with other disciplines such as philosophy, psychology, sociology, anthropology, education, translation, and cognitive science.

Linguists concern themselves with questions such as: How do languages differ? What do they have in common? How and why do languages change? How do children learn language? How does a person's language influence their thinking? How does language reflect society and culture?

The contributions of linguists are important to disciplines like Education, Artificial Intelligence, Software Development, Voice Recognition Technology, Speech Pathology, Search Engine Development, Telecommunications, and Translation, as well as professional fields such as Advertising, Editing and Publishing, Government Service, Journalism, Law, and the Media.

 Last Modified 7/24/14