Linguistics

Broadly conceived, linguistics is the scientific study of human language, and a linguist is someone who engages in this study. (Lay people sometimes use the term linguistician, but as Aitchison 2003 points out, this is "too much of a tongue-twister to become generally accepted.")

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 (idiolect) or language development in great detail. Some study language pertaining to a whole speech community, such as the dialect of those who speak African American Vernacular English ("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.

Related Topics:
Language development - Speech community - Dialect - African American Vernacular English - Ebonics - Linguistic universals - Human language - Noam Chomsky - Psycholinguistics - Cognitive science - Human mind

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