What is Linguistics?
Do you enjoy…
- Thinking about language?
- Exploring and learning other languages and dialects?
- Working out patterns from evidence?
- Learning about the human mind?
- Thinking about how individuals and societies interact?
Linguistics often appeals to students who are curious about language as one of the most fascinating aspects of human knowledge and behaviour. Perhaps you are interested in accents, dialects, or slang, or you are a good learner of languages, or you are intrigued by how language changes over time, or you wonder how humans manage to learn and produce language. Linguistics is also appealing to those who enjoy detailed, problem-solving analysis and careful argumentation. It involves key transferable skills in problem solving and critical thinking.
Linguists investigate how language works; how patterns of sounds, words and sentences combine to convey meaning. Language is fundamental to nearly every aspect of human experience: how we communicate, our sense of identity, how we interact socially, how we think. Linguists explore all these areas and more. They study everyday language use, how it varies and changes geographically, socially and across time, and how children acquire language. Some make computational models of speech and language based on collections of spoken and written language.