Linguistics

Broadly conceived, linguistics is the study of human language, and a linguist is someone who engages in this study. The study of linguistics can be thought of along three major axes, the endpoints of which are described below:

• Synchronic and diachronic - Synchronic study of a language is concerned with its form at a given moment; diachronic study covers the history of a language (group) and its structural changes over time.
• Theoretical and applied - Theoretical (or general) linguistics is concerned with frameworks for describing individual languages and theories about universal aspects of language; applied linguistics applies these theories to other fields.
• Contextual and independent - Contextual linguistics is concerned with how language fits into the world: its social function, how it is acquired, how it is produced and perceived. Independent linguistics considers languages for their own sake, aside from the externalities related to a language. Terms for this dichotomy are not yet well established--the Encyclopædia Britannica uses macrolinguistics and microlinguistics instead.

Given these dichotomies, scholars who call themselves simply linguists or theoretical linguists, with no further qualification, tend to be concerned with independent, theoretical synchronic linguistics, which is acknowledged as the core of the discipline. Linguistic inquiry is pursued by a wide variety of specialists, who may not all be in harmonious agreement; as Russ Rymer flamboyantly puts it:

Diachronic Linguistics

Whereas the core of theoretical linguistics is concerned with studying languages at a particular point in time (usually the present), diachronic linguistics examines how language changes through time, sometimes over centuries. Historical linguistics enjoys both a rich history (the study of linguistics grew out of historical linguistics) and a strong theoretical foundation for the study of language change. In American universities, the non-historic perspective seems to have the upper hand. Many introductory linguistics classes, for example, cover historical linguistics only cursorily. The shift in focus to a non-historic perspective started with Saussure and became predominant with Noam Chomsky. 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. Usually applied linguistics refers to the use of linguistic research in language teaching, but linguistics is used in other areas, as well. Speech synthesis and speech recognition, for example, use linguistic knowledge to provide voice interfaces to computers.

Contextual Linguistics

Contextual linguistics is that realm where linguistics interacts with other academic disciplines. Whereas core theoretical linguistics studies languages for their own sake, the interdisciplinary areas of linguistic consider how language interacts with the rest of the world. However, that rather depends upon their world-view.

Individual speakers, language communities, and linguistic universals

Linguists also differ in how broad a group of language users they study. Some analyze a given speaker's language or language development in great detail. Some study language pertaining to a whole speech community, such as the language of all those who speak Black English Vernacular ("Ebonics"). Others try to find linguistic universals that apply, at some abstract level, to all users of human language everywhere. This latter project has been most famously advocated by Noam Chomsky, and it interests many people in psycholinguistics and cognitive science. It is thought that universals in human language may reveal important insight into universals about the human mind.

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