CAL Online Resources: Digests

What Is Linguistics?
December 1992
Center for Applied Linguistics

Linguistics is the study of language. Knowledge of linguistics, however, is different from

knowledge of a language. Just as a person is able to drive a car without understanding the inner
workings of the engine, so, too, can a speaker use a language without any conscious knowledge
of its internal structure. Conversely, a linguist can know and understand the internal structure
of a language without actually speaking it.

A linguist, then, is not an individual who speaks more than one language, more accurately
called polyglot or bilingual or multilingual. Rather, a linguist is concerned with language as a
human phenomenon. Linguists study grammar, the social and psychological aspects of language
use, and the relationships among languages, both historical and present-day. The field of
linguistics, like any complex field, includes several major divisions.

Formal Linguistics
Formal linguistics is the study of the structures and processes of language, that is, how
language works and is organized. Formal linguists study the structures of different languages,
and by identifying and studying the elements common among them, seek to discover the most
efficient way to describe language in general.

There are three main schools of thought in formal linguistics:

1. The traditional, or prescriptive, approach to grammar is probably familiar to most of us. It is

what we are usually taught in school. "A noun is a person, place, or thing" is a typical
definition in a traditional grammar. Such grammars typically prescribe rules of correct or
preferred usage.

2. Structural linguistics, a principally American phenomenon of the mid-20th century, is

typified by the work of Leonard Bloomfield, who drew on ideas of the behaviorist school of
psychology. Structuralists are primarily concerned with phonology, morphology, and syntax
(described below). They focus on the physical features of utterances with little regard for
meaning or lexicon (Crystal, 1980). They divide words into form classes distinguished
according to grammatical features. For example, a noun is defined in terms of its position in
a sentence and its inflections, such as the -s for plural.

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3. The generative/transformational approach to the study of grammar was introduced by
Noam Chomsky in 1957 in his seminal work, Syntactic Structures. Here he traced a
relationship between the "deep structure" of sentences (what is in the mind) and their
"surface structure" (what is spoken or written). For example, the surface structure of the
sentence, "The postman was bitten by the dog," was derived from the deep structure, "The
dog bit the postman," through the application of a passive transformation. From
transformational/generative grammar arose the theory of Universal Grammar. This widely
accepted theory starts from the perception that all languages share certain linguistic
features (universals). The goal of this theory is to explain the uniformity of language
acquisition among humans despite ostensible differences in their native languages. Since
Chomsky's original proposals in 1957, numerous elaborations and alternative theories have
been proposed.

Formal linguistics includes five principal areas of study:

1. Phonetics is the study of the sounds of language and their physical properties. Phonetics
describes how speech sounds are produced by the vocal apparatus (the lungs, vocal cords,
tongue, teeth, etc.) and provides a framework for their classification.
2. Phonology involves analyzing how sounds function in a given language or dialect. For
example, /p/ has two possible sounds in English depending on its position in a word. If you
place a sheet of paper near your mouth and pronounce the words pin and spin, the paper
will vibrate after the /p/ in the first word but not after the same sound in the second word.
This puff of air occurs when /p/ is in the initial position of a word in English. Phonologists
examine such phonetic shifts to construct theories about linguistic sounds in one language
that can be used in comparing linguistic systems. The analysis of sounds in different
languages can be very useful for foreign language teachers.
3. Morphology is the study of the structure of words. Morphologists study minimal units of
meaning, called morphemes, and investigate the possible combinations of these units in a
language to form words. For example, the word "imperfections" is composed of four
morphemes: im + perfect + ion + s. The root, perfect, is transformed from an adjective into a
noun by the addition of ion, made negative with im, and pluralized by s.
4. Syntax is the study of the structure of sentences. Syntacticians describe how words
combine into phrases and clauses and how these combine to form sentences. For example,
"I found a coin yesterday" is embedded as a relative clause in the sentence, "The coin that I
found yesterday is quite valuable." Syntacticians describe the rules for converting the first
sentence into the second.
5. Semantics is the study of meaning in language. The goal of semantic study is to explain how
sequences of language are matched with their proper meanings and placed in certain
environments by speakers of the language. The importance of meaning is revealed in the
following well known example from Chomsky (1957): "Colorless green ideas sleep
furiously." Though grammatical, this sentence is largely meaningless in ordinary usage.

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Sociolinguistics
Sociolinguistics is the study of language as a social and cultural phenomenon. The major
divisions within the field of sociolinguistics are described below.

Language Variation describes the relationship between the use of linguistic forms and factors
such as geography, social class, ethnic group, age, sex, occupation, function, or style. The
combination of these various factors results in an individual's idiolect, that is, their particular
and idiosyncratic manner of speech. When a variety of language is shared by a group of
speakers, it is known as a dialect. A dialect, whether standard or nonstandard, includes the full
range of elements used to produce speech: pronunciation, grammar, and interactive features.
In this respect, dialect should be distinguished from accent, which usually refers only to
pronunciation.

All speakers of a language speak a dialect of that language. For example, the speech of an
Alabaman is quite different from that of a New Englander, even though the language spoken by
both is English. Further differentiation is possible by investigating factors such as social class,
age, sex, and occupation.

Language and Social Interaction. This is the province of language and its function in the real
world.

Three subfields of sociolinguistics investigate this relationship.

1. Pragmatics looks at how context affects meaning. As a function of context, the intended
meaning of an utterance is often different from its literal meaning. For example, "I'm
expecting a phone call" can have a variety of meanings. It could be a request to leave the
phone line free or a reason for not being able to leave the house; or it could suggest to a
listener who already has background information that a specific person is about to call to
convey good or bad news.
2. Discourse analysis examines the way in which sentences relate in larger linguistic units,
such as conversational exchanges or written texts. Matters of cohesion (the relationship
between linguistic forms and propositions) and coherence (the relationship between speech
acts) are also investigated. The links between utterances in sequence are important topics
of analysis.
3. Ethnography of communication uses the tools of anthropology to study verbal interaction
in its social setting. One example of ethnographic research is the study of doctor-patient
communication. Such study involves microanalysis of doctor-patient interaction, noting not
only what is said but also pauses between turns, interruptions, questioning and response
patterns, changes in pitch, and nonverbal aspects of interaction, such as eye contact.

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Language Attitudes. The attitudes people hold toward different language varieties and the
people who speak them are important to sociolinguists. Whereas studies in language and social
interaction investigate actual language interaction, language attitude studies explore how
people react to language interactions and how they evaluate others based on the language
behavior they observe.

Language Planning is the process of implementing major decisions regarding which languages
should be used on a societal scale. Language attitude studies are an essential component of
language planning. In the United States, issues such as establishing bilingual education
programs or whether to declare English the official language are major language planning
decisions.

It is in multilingual nations, however, that language planning is most significant. Governments

must decide which of a country's many languages to develop or maintain and which to use for
such functions as education, government, television, and the press. Corpus planning involves
the development or simplification of writing systems, dictionaries, and grammars for
indigenous languages, in addition to the coining of words to represent new concepts. In such
contexts, language planning is an important factor in economic, political, and social
development.

Psycholinguistics
Psycholinguistics is the study of the relationship between linguistic and psychological behavior.
Psycholinguists study first and second language acquisition and how humans store and retrieve
linguistic information, referred to as verbal processing.

Language Acquisition. The study of how humans acquire language begins with the study of
child language acquisition. Principally, two hypotheses have been put forth. The first, deriving
from the structuralist school of linguistics, holds that children learn language through imitation
and positive-negative reinforcement. This is known as the behaviorist approach. The second, or
innateness hypothesis, proposes that the ability to acquire language is a biologically innate
capacity. Furthermore, innate language learning ability is linked to physiological maturation and
may atrophy around the time of puberty. The innateness hypothesis derives from the
generative/transformational school of linguistics.

Such descriptions of language acquisition are further tested in exploring how adults acquire
language. It appears that most adults learn language through memorization and positive-
negative reinforcement: a manifestation of the behaviorist model. Whether this is a result of
the post-pubescent decay of the innate ability described above or a result of other
psychological and cultural factors is a question of great interest to the psycholinguist.

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Verbal Processing involves speaking, understanding, reading, and writing, and therefore
includes both the production of verbal output and reception of the output of others. For
example, although the sentences of a language may theoretically be infinitely long, there are
constraints placed on their length, as well as on their structural characteristics, by our
processing capabilities. Although we readily comprehend "The dog bit the cat that chased the
mouse that ran into the hole," we have some difficulty sorting out "The mouse the cat the dog
bit chased ran into the hole." Why this is so, in terms of cognition, perception, and physiology,
is of major interest to the psycholinguist.

Applied Linguistics
The findings of linguistics, like the findings of any other theoretical study, can be applied to the
solution of practical problems, as well as to innovations in everyday areas involving language.
This is the mandate of applied linguistics.

Applied linguists draw from theories of language acquisition to develop first and second
language teaching methodologies and to implement successful literacy programs; they may
draw from theories of sociolinguistics to develop special teaching strategies for speakers of
nonstandard English. Applied linguists may also engage in language planning by developing
alphabets and grammars for unwritten languages and by writing dictionaries. They are
sometimes asked to be expert witnesses in legal cases involving language. Computer
corporations employ applied linguists to examine speech synthesis and speech recognition by
automated machines. In short, applied linguists apply the theories and tools of formal
linguistics, sociolinguistics, and psycholinguistics in a wide variety of socially useful ways.

For Further Reading

Chomsky, N. (1957). Syntactic structures. The Hague, Netherlands: Mouton.
Chomsky, N. (1968). Language and mind. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Crystal, D. (1980). A dictionary of linguistics and phonetics. Cambridge: Basil Blackwell.
Elgin, S.H. (1979). What is linguistics? (2nd ed.). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Fromkin, V., & Rodman, R. (1978). An introduction to language (2nd ed.). New York: Holt,
Rinehart and Winston.
Slobin, D.I. (1971). Psycholinguistics. Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman.
Trudgill, P. (1983). Sociolinguistics: An introduction to language and society (rev. ed.).
Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin.

This report was prepared with funding from the Office of Educational Research and
Improvement, U.S. Dept. of Education, under contract no. RI88062010. The opinions expressed
do not necessarily reflect the positions or policies of OERI or ED.

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