GEN102 - What is Linguistics (not)?

Hello, I thought it might be a good idea to let all the beginners in linguistics know

what linguistics is all about.

Or should I say what linguistics is not about?

Well using a little book by my former teacher David Crystal, this one here, what is linguistics?

I think it's worthwhile in a tent.

Linguistics is a word which seems very much prone to misinterpretation.

In this short video I will first outline these misconceptions and tell you what linguistics

is not.

Before in the second part I will go on defining what linguistics really is.

So let's start with the word linguistics itself.

The word linguistics is an invariable singular noun.

So please never ask what are linguistics but what is linguistics?

Well then there are numerous misconceptions about the nature of linguistics.

So let's get these out of the way.

Linguistics is not to be identified with the following four main fields.

Comparative philology or philology or historical language studies.

The learning of many languages, literary criticism and last but not least the traditional study

of grammar.

Let us look at these misconceptions more closely.

First, linguistics is not just confined to a historical study, even though aspects such

as the origin of language.

The historical development of languages such as English from other languages or historical

language studies are important fields within linguistics, they only cover a minor aspect

of it.

Secondly, linguistics should not be equated with language teaching or learning.

In his little book What Is Linguistics, which I showed you earlier on, published in 1974,

David Crystal illustrated this misconception by means of the following dialogue.

You're at the university aren't you?

And what do you do there?

Well, I teach linguistics.

But how many languages do you speak?

Well, few professional linguists are fluent in more than one language.

It's not speaking a language that makes someone a linguist but being able to speak about a language.

And knowing about the principles on which languages are built and can be said to work.

Yes, and how should we answer the former question about how many languages linguists speak?

Well, my answer tongue and cheek could be something like 57 or maybe even 58.

Thirdly, linguistics is not mainly concerned with evaluating the use of language at special

levels.

We are interested, for example, to judge the kind of language used in literary texts.

For example, in Shakespeare Sonnets, you can see one over here.

That's true.

But that does not turn us into critics.

When we look at language use, we are interested in describing the facts.

For example, the patterns of sound, the grammar, and the vocabulary that are used.

But we're not trying to evaluate the language in terms of aesthetics, moral, or other critical

standard.

Fourthly, linguistics should not be mixed up with older approaches to language studies with

which we are familiar from our school days.

There is an enormous mismatch between, for example, traditional grammar taught at school

and the linguistic definition of grammar.

Whereas the traditional attitude to language is prescriptive, the linguistic approach is descriptive

seeking to describe the actual situation, the use of language in speech and writing.

Unignified four scenarios of what linguistics is not, let's now look at what linguistics

is.

Well, there are two central goals of linguistics.

First, linguists are interested in studying particular languages to provide accurate and

complete descriptions of them.

And secondly, linguists want to obtain information about the nature of language, the nature of

language in general to find out how language works.

Put simply, linguistics is the scientific study of language, or should we use a capital

L here to emphasize the fact that we mean both languages and language.

Well, and this raises numerous research questions that can be associated with the

central branches of linguistics as well as with its neighboring disciplines.

Here are the central branches of linguistics, that is, sound, structure, and meaning.

For noticians, for example, are interested in how speech sounds are produced, perceived,

and how they can be analyzed acoustically.

Whereas phonology investigates the principles governing the sound systems of particular

languages and of language in general.

The structure of words and sentences is in the focus of the second branch, where morphology

seeks to define how words are built and syntax is the study of sentence structure.

Well in the third branch is concerned with the study of meaning, the meaning of words

and sentences, which is the focus of semantics, or the use of language and its effects, which

is the goal of pragmatics.

In addition to these central branches, there are numerous hybrid disciplines which combine

their central research questions with those in linguistics.

Psycholinguistics, a combination of psychology, that is, the study of the human mind, and linguistics,

or computational linguistics, a combination of computer science and language study.

And many more, for example, social linguistics, forensic linguistics, clinical linguistics,

neuro-linguistics, corpus linguistics, to name just some of them.

I hope that this short lecture was of some help for you to have an idea about the goals

of linguistics, and furthermore, that you share my fascination of the field.

So join us on the virtual linguistics campus, become a member of the VLC community, and enjoy

the fascination of language study and linguistics.

Thank you very much.