What is a Linguist?

Listed below are a few of the frequently-asked-questions related to linguistics as a career that have been sent to Ask-A-Linguist in the past. However, this is not an exhuastive resource on the topic. What does a linguist do?

Jobs are there? What does a linguist do? Question 1: What is a linguist?

What can a linguist do? I am interested in knowing what the career of being a linguist is about. Would be very frustrating to learn a new one.

Besides analyzing the sentences, such as the grammar, syntax, rhetorical phrases, what is the motivity for you, the linguist, to devote yourselves into this field? Is there something more for linguists to learn besides the terminology/analysis? If there is, what they might be?

In the meanwhile, what can linguists can do? Perform the operation to cure the patient, that is what a doctor is for. Then, how linguists?

There is much more to linguistics than just the technical aspects of language, like writing grammars of languages. One area that everybody is already involved in without really recognizing it is sociolinguistics, that is the understanding of speakers' backgrounds (socioeconomic group, degree of education, age, etc) from how they speak. Linguists also preserve dying languages by working with their speakers on recording them, act as consultants to education programs (e.g. When school systems implement bilingual systems), work out relationships between languages, both extant and extinct, and so.

Yes, there is a field of medical linguistics, where linguists work with medical professionals in bi-cultural areas to help them understand the medical world views of all peoples they may come into contact with in the hospital setting. For example, a western male doctor might have problems treating a woman from a strict Muslim background, and a linguist could help the doctor and patient better understand each other to ensure that they reach the best treatment options. You asked what lingusitics is and why people go into it.

Answer to either question. Language, etc. These are all covered in different subfields of linguistics. What I am particularly interested in is the structure of sentences (syntax) and how different languages are similar to each other and differ from each other in terms of aspects of sentence structure.

These are concerns in an approach to linguistics known as "generative grammar," which was originally developed by Noam Chomsky. I decided to become a linguist for two reasons. First, I love languages and have always beeen fascinated by them.

Second, by studying the structure of languages we are studying something about the structure of the human mind, which to me is a fascinating thing for us to be doing. In general, I think that what makes linguistics so interesting, and also often difficult, is that we are studying ourselves -- we are exploring an important part of what it means to be human. Language is such an integral part of being human.

--Panelist Yehuda N. Cognitive linguistics, potentially. I would suggest that you go to the Web site of the Linguistic Society of America, at www.lsadc.org, and click on "Fields of Linguistics&qout;.

This will take you to careful brief descriptions of what linguists in a variety of areas of the discipline do, all written by practicing linguists. The Linguistic Society of America publishes an informative brochure, The Field of Linguistics, that answers many of your questions. I do not know whether the brochure is on the LSA website, but that would be the place to begin looking.

Language-oriented jobs are there?