Why Study Linguistics?
What is Linguistics?
"The marvelous thing is that even in studying Linguistics, we find that the universe as a whole is patterned, ordered, and to some degree intelligible to us." - Kenneth L. Pike
Linguistics is the scientific study of language and its structure, including the study of language patterns, rules of sentence structure, speech sounds and transmission, how we hear words, and the different interpretations of the meanings we attach to those words. It describes how different languages build sounds and words and sentences.
Why study Linguistics?
Language is a complex, species-specific system made up of several components (sound, sentence structure, and meaning). The study of linguistics gives us a unique window on the structure of the human mind and the mind's activity. Further, there are many real world applications of linguistics (e.g., natural language technologies). Additional information can be found at the Linguistic Society of America.