“What is linguistics?”
101 answers
Linguists are used to the fact that many people
don’t know what “linguistics” really means. Many linguists find it
easier to answer the question up front, before confusion sets in and they are
asked how many languages they speak.
I doubt that many mathematics departments open their web site with
“What is math?” in big bold letters, but many linguistics departments do exactly
that. In order to save linguists the
trouble of having to repeatedly answer the question, this page has 101
(actually more) answers that have been given to the question. If you were
sent here by a linguist after asking “How many languages do you speak?”, I
hope the answers here will help you understand the linguist’s response. Perhaps the best response is from linguists themselves, the LSA Guide to the fields of linguistics is probably the best answer.If you have a little
time, here are three other sites with fairly detailed answers… What
is Linguistics? from an on-line course at the Translation, Theory and
Technology Homepage Another good
place to start is at a linguistics FAQ. Here are two examples… and another faq from John
Lawler If you’re interested in learning more here’s a list of on-line
materials for introductory
linguistics courses. Here is The Audio Version of a response.
It contains a downloadable audio file of a spoken response to “What is
linguistics?”. And
just in case you have nothing better to do, here is Joseph
Stalin’s answer to “What is linguistics?” from the Anarchy Archives at
marxists.org An
additional 100 answers are listed below (including a few answers in languages
other than English)… |
Bielefeld University (Germany) |
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Göteborgs
University (Sweden) |
Hacattepe
University (Turkey) |
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La Trobe University (Australia) |
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Mainz University (Germany) |
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National Chung Cheng University (Taiwan) |
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Universität des Saarlandes (pdf file) |
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University of New England (Australia) |
University of Otago (New Zealand) |
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