What is Linguistics?

Ever wondered why it is that your two year old niece is learning to speak at an alarming rate while you are struggling so hard to learn a second language at school? Why is Shakespeare's English so different from our own and how did all the different accents and dialects of English arise? Are some languages easier to learn than others? Do all languages have something in common or can human languages vary in an infinite number of ways? Is it really possible to translate perfectly from one language to another? Will we ever be able to hold a conversation with a computer? If you have ever asked yourself these questions then you are in good company. These are the kinds of questions that linguists seek to answer.

Linguistics is the study of human language. Linguists are concerned both with what all languages have in common and with how individual languages can differ from one another. Linguists study how languages are structured, how they are learned and used, and how languages change through time. We build theories of language structure just as a physicist will build theories of the structure of matter. We construct theories about how language is learned just as a psychologist will construct theories about how any cognitive process is learned. We attempt to explain the role of language in social life just as anthropologists and sociologists do. We attempt to reconstruct the history of languages just as archaeologists and historians reconstruct past cultures.

Staff and students in UWA's Department of Linguistics are involved in both theoretical research and in projects of a more practical or field-oriented nature. They have worked in the Pacific Islands and in Aboriginal Australia, producing grammatical descriptions and dictionaries, works concerned with linguistic theory, computer models of language structure and of language learning, and historical, socio-cultural, and education-oriented studies.

Linguistics may be studied as part of a Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Science or Bachelor of Cognitive Science degree. Linguistics has no prerequisites. Students often ask whether they have to know many languages, or have to be 'good at languages' to do well in Linguistics. It certainly doesn't hurt to know several languages, but it isn't necessary either. What is most important is to have a curiosity about languages and language, because that is where Linguistics really starts.

Linguistics is of value in any future career involving language or languages, human social organisation and culture, the nature of intelligence, or the human mind. Many students with undergraduate degrees in Linguistics enter careers in language teaching, journalism and broadcasting, translation and interpreting, Aboriginal education and advisory work, or the computer software industry. With additional postgraduate study in Linguistics, more specialised job opportunities become available including: industry jobs in the fields of speech technology, natural language understanding, and artificial intelligence; positions in the medical professions related to speech and hearing disorders; law consultancies relating to the interpretation of legal language; and staff positions for major dictionaries.