Linguistics An Essential Introduction (Version 1.5)

In the tech sector, people with linguistics training use their skills to improve software that summarizes texts, translates from one language to another, synthesizes natural-sounding speech for your voice assistant or your GPS, helps your voice assistant understand your speech! As we are writing this book, speech recognition systems do an okay job on standardized American English accents, especially when spoken by lower voices, but are much less accurate for higher voices and for the many different accents that English speakers use. Maybe you’ll be one of the linguists who pushes back against these biases that are built into the algorithms!

Speaking of tech, another field where language science is valuable is in developing language-learning apps. That owl that scolds you if you skip your daily Esperanto practice was designed by linguists! But it — and other apps — are not designed particularly well, so maybe you’ll be the creator of a better app based on what you learn in the course of your studies!

That brings us to another really important area where linguistics is important: in supporting people who want to reclaim, revive, or revitalize the traditional languages of their communities that have been lost, or at least severly damaged, by colonialism and capitalism. A thorough, scientific linguistic analysis of the grammars of these languages can be useful for creating teaching materials and supporting adult language learners who did not have the chance to learn their languages as children. Note, however, that the impetus for such activities must come from the members of these language communities themselves — as members of the cultures that are responsible for much of the damage that colonialism and capitalism have done, we can offer our expertise, but only when asked to do so!

Linguistics training is not only good for language learning, but also for language teaching! Studying linguistics is often a good entry point to getting certified as an ESL teacher, or learning how to teach any other language for that matter. While many ESL teachers have little knowledge of linguistics, it is obvious how they could profit from such knowledge. We can all pick up languages intuitively, but it is the job of a teacher to speed up the learning process by offering explicit instruction on the structure of the language. After having studied a language’s grammar scientifically, and having learned to view grammar as a tool for communication rather than a hurdle to communication, we can do a much better job of that. If you can leave your judgmental attitudes behind and appreciate all languages and linguistic varieties as equally valuable, this will also make a huge difference to how motivated your students are going to be, even if you stay well within the confines of the school system.

Some students are drawn to studying linguistics because they want to pursue a clinical career in speech-language pathology. Ideally, evidence from language science informs the treatments that clinicians offer. For example, if someone has a brain injury, their ability to produce or understand language might be impaired, and speech therapy can sometimes recover some of that function. Or a trans person who wants their voice to sound different might seek the advice of a speech-language pathologist as part of their transition. Some clinicians take their careers in a more Hollywood direction and offer accent or dialect coaching for actors!

Linguists find their skills called upon in many other industries. Here are some things that linguists can get paid for:

Language is everywhere. It’s fundamental to how humans interact with each other, so understanding how language works is part of understanding people. And understanding people just might be a step towards doing some good in the world.

CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0. Adapted from Catherine Anderson, Bronwyn Bjorkman, Derek Denis, Julianne Doner, Margaret Grant, Nathan Sanders, and Ai Taniguchi, Essentials of Linguistics. 2nd ed. with minor edits; additions about language teaching by Kirsten Middeke.