What Is Linguistics?
The most common question people ask is if language and linguistics mean the same. No, they are not the same at all, BUT they are connected.
WHAT IS LINGUISTICS?
Linguistics is the scientific study of language, which doesn't means that we study a specific language, but we study about the structure of the language: what the language even is and how it works, how one dialect differ from another dialect, how new languages developed from old languages, the history of language families, how culture and language interact and more. On the other hand, studying a language involves the learning of grammar and vocabulary, that allow you to express yourself in specific language, when talking to native speakers.
SCIENTIFIC STUDY
As I already mentioned, linguistics is the scientific study. Scientific study is a huge variation among the world's languages. It describes the diverse characteristics and basic ingredients of individual languages and the properties which all languages share as for instance 'language families': Indo-European languages, Germanic languages, Slavic languages, Celtic languages and more.
HOW IS LINGUISTICS DIVIDED?
Linguistics is divided into many branches, but ones that are really important are:
PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY (listening and speaking - sound!)
MORPHOLOGY AND SYNTAX (puzzles of words - structure!)
SEMANTICS AND PRAGMATICS (meaning!)
IMPORTANT!
It is important to remember that knowledge of linguistics is not the same as knowledge of a language! For instance: speaker can use a language without any prior knowledge of its internal structure, but linguist knows and understands language without speaking it.
Please don't mix linguist and polyglot! Polyglot is person, who can speak many languages, while linguist is a human phenomenon, who studies grammar, the social and psychological aspects of language use and also the relationship among historical and present-day languages.
DIVERSITY OF LINGUISTICS
Diversity does not only cover varied types of traits mentioned on the top of this post (language families, grammar, vocabulary,...), but it also draws on methods and knowledge from a wide range of scientific disciplines. It also transcends the usual subject boundaries as for instance: in psychology, IT, neurology, physics, philosophy, engineering, etc.
We can find linguistics in medieval texts and in neurological and computational processing of language.
So, my dear linguistics buddies :)
I hope this blog post helped you understand term 'Linguistics' better. Everything you read here is from my own notes and knowledge that I acquired from my university professor.
Thank you for reading till the end and good luck with your studies!
Remember, excellence is not being the best; it is doing your best.
See you in my next blog post!
With love,
Anja
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