Linguistics and the social sciences

How does the pronunciation of 'car' vary with class or region? When and why do students learning
English use their first language (Cantonese perhaps, or Spanish) in the classroom? How have the voices
broadcast on the BBC changed? Do men interrupt women more than women interrupt men? Why do
British people say 'You wouldn't happen to have the correct time, would you?' when they mean 'What's
the time?'

Many students of linguistics find themselves dealing with issues that have concerned social sciences
such as sociology, anthropology, geography, politics, and social psychology. And many students in these
subjects find themselves wanting a principled, consistent analysis of some form of language: they have a
collection of policy documents, new articles, interviews, or transcripts from television, and they want to
relate them to some issue about social change. This note is intended for teachers of courses with titles
like 'Language in Society' who want to lead their students to further resources for linking linguistics to
the social sciences. Rather than try to map the complex relations between these fields, I will point to a
few concepts that suggest the need to look further.

What linguists need from the social sciences

The practical strength of most linguists is their ability to pursue sustained analysis, and often to compare
the applicability of two or more different systems of analysis. To do this, they often take some key social
aspects of language use for granted, particularly in undergraduate coursework. Current work in the
social sciences problematizes some of these concepts.

Identities

Social scientists have often warned sociolinguists against essentialising identities, taking them as fixed
attributes, categories to be ticked off in the survey. Class was the first of these categories to be called
into question; belonging to a class seems to be not so much a socio-economic fact as a cultural process.
Gender also becomes complicated, a performance of certain roles that may or may not correspond to
biological sex. National identities, so closely tied to languages and especially standard languages, can be
treated as 'imagined communities'. While an earlier generation of sociolinguists looked for the authentic
user of a language, often the oldest and most isolated speaker in a community, current sociolinguistics
celebrates hybridity, the mixing and crossing of identities. Students sometimes imagine, from the
skepticism of current social science approaches to class, gender, and ethnicity, that the social
inequalities described in these terms have magically disappeared over the last generation. This is
unfortunately not the case. See Antaki and Widdecombe (1998); Bucholtz, Liang, and Sutton (1999).

Subjects

Sociolinguists have long criticised the ideal speaker-hearer proposed by Chomsky, starting instead a
person embedded in complex social relations and histories. Recently they have often cited post-
structuralist critiques of the very idea of a subject, the idea that there is a unified 'I' at the source of
speaking and action. In these critiques, the 'I' is the effect, not the source, or speech; I am constructed
as a unified, ongoing entity by language. But in linguistics, as in other disciplines, most students are
actually rather uneasy with such critiques; at some level they believe there is a real self that precedes
and underlies language. These questions arise when one studies formulaic language, or conventional
genres, or language use that mixes different voices. Where is the subject in such speech? See Potter and
Wetherell (1987); Shotter (1993).

Agency

One reason linguists are so uneasy with post-structuralist critiques is that they seem to remove any
sense that a person can do anything to change things. The recognition in the 1960s and 1970s that when
you say something you do something opened up whole fields of study in speech act theory, the
ethnography of speaking, politeness theory, and stylistics. But if there is no unified subject behind these
actions, then the models begin to look rather simplistic. So, for instance, the hope of finding a taxonomy
of speech events, neatly categorized by several parameters such as participants, setting, and acts,
crumbles as one tries to figure out the ends of such an event. See Moerman (1988).

Structure

Linguists have traditionally turned to sociology and political science for an account of social structure:
stratification, institutions, laws, roles, exchange. But in the stripped-down version of sociology used by
linguists, it is hard to tell how these structures ever change: working class people talk working class,
some people have authority, and institutions specify the appropriateness of kinds of language to be
used within them. Current research emphasizes different kinds of mediation between language and
social change, the importance of different discourse practices, so that change or resistance to change
are not just read off the kind of language used. See Chouliaraki and Fairclough (1999), Cameron (2000).

Public and private

One line of social and political thought over the last thirty years has dealt with the ideal of a public
sphere, a realm in which discussion can take place and civil society can be constituted. This might seem
to be far removed from linguistics and the study of actual interactions. But Jurgen Habermas, in
developing the idea of a public sphere, drew on speech act theory, and linguists have been increasingly
concerned with the uses of language in public discussion. The other side of such a division is the new
interest in the use of language in intimate, domestic, private circumstances, and in the silences and
omissions of the public sphere. See Behabib (1996); Livingstone and Lunt (1994).

Play

So far, this review is making society sound rather grim and earnest. But we find repeated reminders in
sociology and anthropology of the ubiquity and importance of mocking, hypothetical, and unserious
uses of language, and delight in the sounds and patterns for their own sake. See Bateson (1972) and
Goffman (1974); for readable overviews by linguists, see Crystal (1998) and Cook (2000).

What social scientists need from linguists

Grammar

Structuralism transformed the human sciences in the 1960s and 1970s with the prospect that all aspects
of culture could have the kind of organisation found in language. Linguistic concepts were applied to
films, architecture, and food. These projects have proved impossible, or perhaps just deeply
unfashionable. Now the question might be why the 'grammars' of all these other symbol systems are so
unlike those of languages
Text

Social scientists pile up huge amounts of text, usually without looking at it as text. Various researchers
have demanded that they pay attention to the structure, rhetoric, and materiality of media texts,
documents, interviews, surveys. Linguists can provide a start on the detailed analysis, though of course
sociologists, psychologists, or geographers may be looking for something different from what linguists
look for.

Interaction

When we closely at social science research data, we begin to reconstruct the interactions that have
been reified in survey results, media effects, interview or focus group quotations.

Genre

Researchers in a range of fields, from film studies to computational linguistics, need ways of categorising
types of texts. Studies of genre link these sterotypical forms to the kinds of interaction going on.
Linguists have a body of work on analysing written and spoken (and more recently, visual) texts.

Corpus

Linguists and computational researchers have developed large collections of language data. The
collections themselves may not be of interest to most social scientists, who would have their own
preferred designs for such a corpus. But the tools for searching and comparing corpora could be useful
to social scientists who want to extend their analyses beyond the few texts they can analyse in detail by
hand.

Each human language is a complex of knowledge and abilities enabling speakers of the language to
communicate with each other, to express ideas, hypotheses, emotions, desires, and all the other things
that need expressing. Linguistics is the study of these knowledge systems in all their aspects: how is such
a knowledge system structured, how is it acquired, how is it used in the production and comprehension
of messages, how does it change over time? Linguists consequently are concerned with a number of
particular questions about the nature of language. What properties do all human languages have in
common? How do languages differ, and to what extent are the differences systematic, i.e. can we find
patterns in the differences? How do children acquire such complete knowledge of a language in such a
short time? What are the ways in which languages can change over time, and are there limitations to
how languages change? What is the nature of the cognitive processes that come into play when we
produce and understand language?

The part of linguistics that is concerned with the structure of language is divided into a number of
subfields:

Phonetics - the study of speech sounds in their physical aspects

Phonology - the study of speech sounds in their cognitive aspects

Morphology - the study of the formation of words

Syntax - the study of the formation of sentences

Semantics - the study of meaning

Pragmatics - the study of language use

Aside from language structure, other perspectives on language are represented in specialized or
interdisciplinary branches:

Historical Linguistics

Sociolinguistics

Psycholinguistics

Ethnolinguistics (or Anthropological Linguistics)

Dialectology

Computational Linguistics

Neurolinguistics

Because language is such a central feature of being a human, Linguistics has intellectual connections and
overlaps with many other disciplines in the humanities, the social sciences, and the natural sciences.
Some of the closest connections are with Philosophy, Literature, Language Pedagogy, Psychology,
Sociology, Physics (acoustics), Biology (anatomy, neuroscience), Computer Science, Computer
Engineering, Health Sciences (Aphasia, Speech Therapy).

The main purpose of the study of Linguistics in an academic environment is the advancement of
knowledge. However, because of the centrality of language in human interaction and behavior, the
knowledge gained through the study of linguistics has many practical consequences and uses. Graduates
of undergraduate and graduate programs in Linguistics apply their training in many diverse areas,
including language pedagogy, speech pathology, speech synthesis, natural language interfaces, search
engines, machine translation, forensics, naming, and of course all forms of writing, editing, and
publishing. Perhaps the most widely appreciated application was contributed by UCSC Linguistics
alumnus Marc Okrand, who invented the Klingon language for Star Trek.

The discipline of linguistics focuses on theories of language structure, variation and use, the description
and documentation of contemporary languages, and the implications of theories of language for an
understanding of the mind and brain, human culture, social behavior, and language learning and
teaching.

Phonology and phonetics — the study of the sound systems of languages — deals with the basic
utterances in speech. It can be investigated by observing which physical properties of the vocal tract
(including the lips and tongue) are used to form distinct linguistic sounds to convey information.
Morphology and syntax are concerned with the study of the internal structure of words and sentences.
Apart from the study of the sound systems of languages and word and sentence structure, linguists seek
to specify the meaning behind words and combinations of words. This investigation is known as
semantics. Semanticists also compare the meanings of these combinations when they interact with
contextual information, a subfield known as pragmatics.
Linguists investigate how people acquire their knowledge about language, how this knowledge interacts
with other cognitive processes, how it varies across speakers and geographic regions, and how to model
this knowledge computationally. They study how to represent the structure of the various aspects of
language (such as sounds or meaning), how to account for different linguistic patterns theoretically, and
how the different components of language interact with each other. Many linguists collect empirical
evidence to help them gain insight into a specific language or languages in general. They may conduct
research by interacting with children and adults in schools, in the field, and in university labs.

Because of the pervasive influence of language in our everyday lives, work in linguistics interacts in
important ways with studies carried out in many other fields, including psychology, anthropology,
neuroscience, law, philosophy, computer science, communication, and education. Majors in linguistics
find practical outlets for their linguistic training in the computer industry, law and forensics, teaching
foreign languages and English as a second language, translation and interpretation, speech pathology,
lexicography, and policy-making in government and education. All these fields of employment share an
interest in people with highly developed skills in the analysis and use of spoken or written language. The
major in linguistics equips students with just such skills.

How old is linguistic as discipline?

Lexicography, pedagogic grammar, philosophy of language - they all have a long tradition in the West.
You could almost say that applied linguistics came first.

One of the earliest significant works of linguistic theory was the Port Royal grammar of 1660 but it can in
no way be seen as even a pre-cursor of modern linguistics. Its importance was retrospectively
recognised by Chomsky but it had almost no direct influence on the development of the discipline.

The true starting point of linguistics as a separate discipline is generally identified in the work of William
Jones (more than 100 years after the Port Royal grammar). Jones recognized commonalities between
several Indo-European languages and thus started what is still recognizable as modern philology. From
him, we can trace the developments of the following century almost in a direct line.

It would be another 100 years before we could point to something that looks like truly modern
linguistics. By this I mean, an empirical research paradigm aimed at discovering the principles behind the
workings of individual languages, their building blocks and language as a general phenomenon. Some
names that stand out along the way are Wilhelm von Humboldt and Hermann Paul but it's not until the
work of people like Otto Jespersen, Ferdinand de Saussure, Jan Baudouin de Courtenay and Vilém
Mathesius at the start of the 20th century that we get output that we can read and still find linguistic
affinities with (note: philologists can go all the way to Jones). de Saussure is by far the most famous but
mostly through the efforts of his students. The competence/performance dichotomy can be directly
traced to him (Chomsky's inventing history by pointing to the Port Royal grammar as his true
antecedent. It was really the structuralists.) And, of course, it is only slightly later that Edward Sapir and
Leonard Bloomfield contributed their significant syntheses that echo in the work of linguists to this day.

We should also not neglect the developments in affiliated disciplines which have been developing along
side (if often slightly behind) general linguistics. Phonetics and phonology, psycholinguistics, and even
philosophy of language each have their own interesting histories and intertwining but separate interests
from those of linguistics. Then there are those of subdisciplines like sociolinguistics, contact linguistics,
discourse analysis, corpus linguistics, etc. which each also have trajectories that are worth pursuing
most of them not really starting until the 1950s. In many people's mind, linguistics is identified with
generative linguistics but that is only one of the many subdisciplines of the field whose importance was
artificially inflated at least in part due to US defense funding of AI research (see Frederick Newmeyer's
histories on this).

Sadly Pāṇini's is always only mentioned as a footnote. Yet, his influence on all the Sanskrit scholars must
have been significant. When you compare his meticulous treatment of Sanskrit grammar (including
phonology) from at least 400 BCE with the meager output of European grammarians since the days of
Plato, you cannot be in awe. Arguably the work of Indian grammarians provided models of best
empirical practice for European students of Indo European languages but it is hard to estimate exactly
what impact it's had on linguistics as we know it today. But it is without question the greatest work of
empirical and theoretical linguistic inquiry prior to about the mid 1800s.

Finally, let's talk about the question of "scientific" study of language. Chomsky and his followers often
cover up their embarrassing ignorance of the vast field of linguistics by dismissing anybody not in their
formalist tradition as somehow not scientific enough. Whatever you think about Chomsky's own theory
(and I think it is an impressive achievement if not really that much about the empirical phenomenon
most people would describe as language), this is just pure and unadulterated nonsense. It's a rhetorical
rather than an empirical device that is unfortunately all too common in academic discourse. But it is no
less disreputable by its ubiquity.

Post Script: Many alternative perspectives could be offered on this subject. I have certainly focused on
the work with which I am most familiar and to which I feel a great affinity. However, I suspect that for all
its biases, that mine is fairly mainstream perspective on the history of linguistics. I would accept quibbles
and corrections on almost every particular but the overall trajectory would probably remain the same. I
wrote this from memory (relying on Wikipedia to check the spellings of names) influenced as much by
my reading of the source materials as histories of linguistics I read and classes in the history of linguistics
I took about 20 years ago. I spend a lot of time trying to find connections between old and new
understandings of language but mostly in a rather unsystematic manner, so I took this opportunity to
summarize some of my mental notes.