What is Linguistics? Who is a linguist? What do linguists do? What is the scope of linguistics? How does linguistics differ from literature studies? How does linguistics relate to other disciplines like sociology, psychology, philosophy, literary theory, speech-language pathology and such other disciplines? These are some of the questions, which come to our mind in relation to the subject to linguistics.

The word Linguistics has been derived from Latin lingua (tongue) and istics (knowledge or science). Etymologically, therefore, linguistics is the scientific study of language. Linguistics deals with the structure and development of particular language and its relationship to other languages. It is the study not of one particular language but of human language in general. Broadly, linguistics is the study of human language, its sound, structure, meaning and function. It studies language as a universal and recognizable part of human behaviour. It attempts to describe and analyze language.

    A linguist is a person who engages in such studies. Linguists are interested in all aspects of language, and in all languages of the world, but he/she is not a polyglot necessarily. They are concerned with language variation according to social setting (socio-linguistics), geographical regions (dialectology), time periods (historical linguistics), relationship between language and mind (psycholinguistics) and many such issues.

    The study of linguistics can be conceived as occurring along three major axes. The endpoints of which are:

Synchronic and diachronic– Synchronic study of a language is concerned only with the language as it is at the given time; diachronic study is concerned with the history of language or group of languages, and what structural changes have occurred.

Theoretical and applied– Theoretical linguistics is concerned with creating frameworks for the description of individual languages as well as with theories about universal aspects of language. On the other hand, applied linguistics is linguistics in action and interaction. It is not merely an application of linguistic theory to something, but it has a philosophy of its own and is a discipline in its own right.

Contextual and independent–These terms are used here only for convenience, as terms for this dichotomy are not well established. Contextual linguistics is concerned with how language fits into the world: its social function, how it is acquired and also how it is produced and perceived. On the contrary, independent linguistics considers languages for its own sake and without externalities related to a language. 

Theoretical linguistics:    Theoretical linguistics is often divided into a number of separate areas, to be studied more or less independently. The following divisions are currently widely acknowledged:

Phonetics, the study of different sounds that are employed across all human languages.

Phonology, the study of patterns of a language’s basic sounds. Morphology, the study of the internal structure of words.

Syntax, the study of how words combine to form grammatical sentences. Semantics, the study of the meaning of words, and how these words combine to

form grammatical sentences. Stylistics, the study of style in languages. Pragmatics, the study of how utterances are used (figuratively, literally or

otherwise) in communicative acts.

Diachronic linguistics:

    Whereas the core of theoretical linguistics is concerned with studying languages at a particular point of time (usually the present), diachronic linguistics examines how language changes through time, sometimes over centuries. Historical linguistics enjoys both a rich history and a strong theoretical foundation for the study of language change. Explicitly historical perspectives include historical-comparative linguistics and etymology.

Applied linguistics:

    Whereas theoretical linguistics is concerned with finding and describing generalities both within languages and among all languages, as a group, applied linguistics takes the results of those findings and applies them to other areas. It not only covers the area of language teaching, but the areas of speech synthesis, speech recognition and speech/language pathology as well. This area, not only helps to use linguistic knowledge to provide voice interfaces to computers, but also provides a helping hand to the clinicians/speech pathologists to assess and provide therapeutic measures as per the requirements of their patients.

Contextual linguistics:

    Contextual linguistics is that realm where the linguistics interacts with other academic disciplines. Whereas core linguistics studies languages for their own sake, the inter-disciplinary areas of linguistics consider how language interacts with the rest of the world. Some of these are:

Socio-linguistics and anthropological linguistics, where social scientists interact with linguistics.

Discourse analysis, where rhetoric and philosophy interact with linguistics. Psycholinguistics and neuro-linguistics, where medical sciences meet linguistics.

    Other cross-disciplinary areas of linguistics include language acquisition, evolutionary linguistics, stratificational linguistics and cognitive science.