What Is Linguistics?

The simple answer is that linguistics is the study of language. Not any one specific language, but all language. It is the study of communication in general, the similarities and differences between all languages, including verbal language, sign language, and body language.

That’s all you really need to know, but if you’d like to learn more, read on below…

Thank You for Continuing!

So you’ve done the first step – you’ve learned English. Congratulations! That’s not easy. Learning a new language is tiring, it takes a long time, and sometimes it’s really embarrassing. But it’s also a really brave thing to do. It’s really good for your brain. And the opportunity to learn and grow as a person is so much better when you know more than one language. But what about all that other stuff? What about all the things you still don’t understand about communicating in North America? What about the cultural differences? What about body language? What about the subtle differences between the way you would talk to your boss versus the way you would talk to your friends? What about that pesky North American R sound? There is just so much more to learning a language than just learning words and grammar. Linguistics tries to answer ALL of these questions, not just the structural aspect of language but the cultural and social aspects too.

There are several major fields within linguistics. There is:

Theoretical Linguistics, which studies the theories of language structure
Sociolinguistics, which studies language in society
Psycholinguistics, which studies how the brain processes language,
Historical Linguistics, which studies the history and relationships of languages
First and Second Language Acquisition, which studies how babies first learn language and how adults learn a second language

This is just a very simple breakdown. There is also a lot of debate in the field of linguistics. But that is the beauty of such a diverse topic as language. There is always more to learn. If you’d like to learn more, I put together some terminology lists based on my two passions, sounds and meaning. These are not at all exhaustive lists but I thought they might help you as a starting point in your attempts to learn English more fluently. Thanks for reading. I hope it helps

Linguistics – An Overview

Learn About Language and Linguistics

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