What is linguistics?
Linguistics is the study of human language. It is a large field with many branches, including phonetics (the study of speech sounds), syntax (the study of the grammatical structures of languages), semantics (the study of words and their interpretations), historical linguistics (the study of how languages change over time), and language acquisition (the study of how the brain learns language and how best to teach it to others).
In linguistics, one analyzes and describes how languages work and how they fit our communicative needs. I find it to be the most interesting thing to study because we use language virtually every moment of our lives (in thought as well as speech), and yet there are so many complex things we do with language that we don't even realize we do. To a large extent, how we think and behave is encoded in our language and communication patterns. Each language has a unique way of categorizing meanings and requiring us to make certain associations automatically. For this reason, linguistic analysis may also reveal how speakers of different languages define and process the world in radically different ways, as well as how we can better facilitate communication between people of different language and culture backgrounds.
Music can also be thought of as a language. It has structure, meaning, and can encode the way we think. I like to believe that the way the brain processes music is similar to how it processes language. At least in my experience, coming from one who used to struggle to learn to speak languages, using musical methods (songs, chants, rhythms, etc.) to learn languages has certainly been effective.
In linguistics, one analyzes and describes how languages work and how they fit our communicative needs. I find it to be the most interesting thing to study because we use language virtually every moment of our lives (in thought as well as speech), and yet there are so many complex things we do with language that we don't even realize we do. To a large extent, how we think and behave is encoded in our language and communication patterns. Each language has a unique way of categorizing meanings and requiring us to make certain associations automatically. For this reason, linguistic analysis may also reveal how speakers of different languages define and process the world in radically different ways, as well as how we can better facilitate communication between people of different language and culture backgrounds.
Music can also be thought of as a language. It has structure, meaning, and can encode the way we think. I like to believe that the way the brain processes music is similar to how it processes language. At least in my experience, coming from one who used to struggle to learn to speak languages, using musical methods (songs, chants, rhythms, etc.) to learn languages has certainly been effective.
The value of linguistics:
Studying linguistics makes it easier to learn languages, since you understand why grammar exists and how it differs between languages. It reveals how languages may be related and how translation and interpretation may be done more effectively. As a general rule, the more languages you know, the more successful you will be in communicating with others, even if they speak a language you haven't studied, because linguistic analysis has taught you how to identify the deeper structures that the person is using to form their concepts. For this reason, I believe that becoming linguistically aware is essential to becoming self-aware. As the Chinese philosopher Mencius wrote:
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"From biased words I can see wherein the speaker is blind; from immoderate words, wherein he is ensnared; from heretical words, wherein he has strayed from the right path; from evasive words, wherein he is at his wits' end."
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