What exactly does a linguist do?

If you are reading this, the question that this blog is titled has probably occurred to you. Most of you know me (or at least find my musing reasonably interesting...), but you may not exactly know what I do. You may have read some of the posts about stereotypes, pin/pen, and double modals, and wondered exactly what the heck I'm talking about (or what it matters...). So, that is the subject of this post.

Some of you are probably thinking, 'A linguist is someone who speaks a bunch of languages. How many do you speak?'. It's a typical question that we linguists always get. It makes sense; most people assume that to study language means that you study them to speak them. And, most linguists do speak several languages. But, we actually study the human language capacity (or, if you like Language with a capital L), that is how we as humans communicate with language. I know, I know, it sounds really weird. More specifically, we study Language scientifically. This means that we study why and how we speak/sign the way we do, how that speech/sign is organized (and why it isn't organized another way), what we signal about ourselves with that particular speech/sign, and what we try to accomplish with that speech/sign.

A brief tangent:
You notice that I am saying speech/sign. Sign language is organized in a very similar way to spoken language. It isn't spelling out a language or pantomime; it is a full-blown language, just like speech but a different 'modality' (how the actual act is carried out).

Back to the main point:
So, I study Language. There are many different ways to do this, depending on your particular interests. Some, like me, are really interested in sound. I study how we make sounds (articulation) and how those sounds travel through the air (acoustics), and how we interpret those sounds (perception), thus I am a phonetician. Specifically, I look at how we signal our social groupings and identifications with our speech sounds (I am a socio-phonetician). Others look at how sounds pattern together (phonology). They, phonologists, look at what sounds actually carry meaning (broadly defined) in a language (like how /b/ and /p/ mean something in English, so bout and pout are different words with different meanings, and changing that first sound changes the meaning), and what particular combinations of these meaningful sounds are allowable in certain languages, and try to understand why those particular combinations are allowed and others are not (like how 'brost' could be an English word, but 'pfabm' couldn't be). It is a little more abstract than phonetics.

Some people like words. They look at how words are built in various languages (morphology), and what little bits carry meaning, like how adding -s to some English words means 'more than one' (table to tables) or to others means who did an action (help to helps [this varies widely depending on the English variety, but I hope you get the idea]). Now, this kinda makes sense to many people, because some of this is covered in English class in elementary/middle/high school. So, we are familiar with the idea of 'adding -ed' or something. But, it is more than that. Morphologists look at how these little bits, when solo or combined, create 'meaning' (again broadly defined). They look at how speakers/signers build meaningful units (we think of them as words, but not all languages have what we would consider words per se, I'll touch on this in some later post!).

Some linguists like sentences. Their focus is how phrases are built (syntax) and the underlying organization of groups of meaningful units (words...). This is what many people think of when they think of grammar. They look at how these larger meaning units (like a noun phrase) are constructed and how they behave (such as how to focus on different parts of a sentence).

Others like focusing on how we create meaning with sentences. There are two main types of this: semantics and pragmatics. Semantics looks at how the meaning is built language internally. Pragmatics looks at how meaning is built in the world. For example, a person could say, 'What day is it?'. A semanticist looks at how the meaning is built with the interrogative word, the noun 'day', etc. A pragmatist might look at how this sentence is used in practice, such as a person writing a check (a request for information) or a parent to a child (as a reminder to take out the trash because it's Tuesday).

There are subfields within the broad field also. Some look at the neurological bases for language (neurolinguistics); a person might look at where sound/morphology/syntax is in the brain. Others look at how language is processed (pyscholinguistics), focusing perhaps on sound/morphology/syntax differences and how each is processed faster/slower. Language acquisition (both first language and second language) look at how infants and children acquire language (first language) and/or how learners of second/third/etc languages acquire language. How they acquire means what happens in what order, such as are verbs first? If so, which verbs, or interestingly, what impact does a first language have on the second? Do learners transfer structure? If so, which? (you get the idea!) Historical linguistics looks at language change and how languages develop over time, and how languages are historically related (like how did Latin become Spanish/French/Portuguese/Italian/Romanian). Linguistic anthropology investigates language in culture, and how the two are intertwined. My particular subfield is sociolinguistics. This looks at how speakers express their social groupings.

So, the short answer is a linguist studies language, in all of its wonderful variety!

Oh, and by the way, I speak English natively, Spanish at an advanced level, Portuguese at an intermediate level, tourist level French, Spanish, and German (i.e. potentially find a bathroom and maybe order food...), a smattering of phrases from lots of languages, and I can read Latin well and Greek a little and Old Germanic languages (Old English/Norse/Frisian/High German) a little bit. So, there you go!

Research Help Needed!

Greetings all! 

I'm continuing to work on a project about how people feel about different types of sentences. I'd love some more participants! The links are NOT mobile optimized, so please take them from a desktop or laptop. Here's the announcement:

My name is Paul Reed. I'm a PhD candidate in the Linguistics Program at the University of South Carolina. I am working on a project with Dr. Stan Dubinsky and I am writing to see if you would be willing to take a few minutes to take some surveys to help facilitate our research (the links for which are included at the bottom of this post in no particular order). The experiments that we're asking you to participate in are part of a project aimed at finding out more about how the English language works, (in particular) examining how Modern American English is perceived. Each survey involves rating sound clips based on the acceptability of various sentences and should only take about 15 minutes to do. There are no restrictions on participation eligibility; we welcome responses from anyone that is interested, including: students, faculty/staff, and anyone outside of academia, as well as both native and non-native speakers of English. Please feel free to pass this request along to anyone that you think might be interested in participating. There is no compensation offered for participating, except, of course, the good feeling of helping someone out!

If you have questions or feedback, feel free to contact me at reedpe@email.sc.edu.

Thanks!

Survey 1

http://moore.az1.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_38C3xFB9qcttGO9

Survey 2

http://moore.az1.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_cZJtQyHsuwS2Prf