What is linguistics?

Language lies at the heart of what makes us human, and linguistics is the study of the structure, history, and use of this fundamentally human capacity. Linguistics focuses on the features all languages share and the myriad ways they differ, the ways that language contributes to the organization of society and the ways it produces culture, the role of language in human evolution and in the workings of the human mind.

Linguistics focuses on many different levels of language structure and patterning, beginning with the study of speech sounds, including the physics of speech and the physiology of speaking and hearing (phonetics). From these building blocks, linguists can investigate how speakers of different languages perceive the same sound differently and how sounds are cognitively organized in particular languages (phonology). Linguists also study the ways in which sounds combine into units of meaning to form words, a process that varies dramatically from language to language (morphology). Linguistics includes the examination of how words are combined into novel sentences and into relatively fixed multiword constructions that can be put to use again and again (syntax). The organization of words, phrases, and sentences to make meaning (semantics) is also addressed in linguistic study. Of special interest to linguists at UCSB is the study of the highest level of linguistic structure: connected sequences of utterances or sentences (discourse), in which language users put all of the above linguistic resources to use in interactional context to perform social actions.

Linguistics is also centrally concerned with a wide range of historical, psychological, anthropological, and sociological issues involved in language use. Linguists study how languages develop and how speech sounds, words, and grammatical structures emerge in particular languages and evolve over time (historical linguistics). They also investigate the ways in which the language use of children and adults sheds light on how the mind works (language and cognition). An area of special emphasis within the undergraduate linguistics major and minor at UCSB is sociocultural linguistics, which includes consideration of how language creates cultural meanings and practices, as well as the ways in which it is used to display speakers’ membership in various social categories.

Why study linguistics?

Linguistics provides students with valuable knowledge and skills that prepare them for for graduate and professional study as well as a number of different career paths. The study of linguistics also prepares undergraduates to be well-informed, critically aware, and culturally sensitive members of society.

Students often choose the linguistics major or minor because they enjoy learning languages and want to learn more about the principles that underlie linguistic structure and use. Undergraduates are also attracted to the field because of an interest in specific language-related issues, such as child language acquisition, language change, or speech pathology.

Students in linguistics develop exceptional analytic reasoning skills and an ability to work closely with a variety of types of data. Linguistics students acquire a solid practical knowledge of computer and other technologies related to the analysis of language. Students also gain an understanding of cognitive, sociocultural, and biological aspects of language as a central human activity. Because linguistics is an interdisciplinary field, students become familiar with diverse theories, methods, and perspectives, from the interpretive approaches associated with the humanities to the empirical research traditions of the social sciences to the rigorous testing and modeling of the sciences.

Linguistics majors and minors can go on to graduate school in linguistics and closely related fields such as anthropology, education, psychology, sociology, and the modern languages, as well as to U.S. and international careers in education, science and technology, law, speech pathology, social services and nonprofit work, government services, information technology, interpreting and translation, publishing, business consulting, advertising, the media, and the arts.

For more information about the field of linguistics, see “Why Major in Linguistics? and related links at the Linguistic Society of America website.