This is the most asked question I get so I’ll give it a thorough response. 

Linguistics, quite simply, is the study of language. It is not the study of a language, but the study of language in general. There are far more similarities between an Austronesian language spoken in Tonga, and Cockney English spoken in London than there are differences. Languages share similar patterns of structure, word compounding, language change, phonemic inventory (the letters used), and conceptual motivations. Linguistics is the study of understanding these universal patterns and underlying structures.

Linguistics is quite removed from English grammar lessons. Actually, linguists are quite fond of variations of English and find sentences like the following perfectly grammatical depending on the dialectal region.

 “You come eat my house”                                Come and eat over at my house. (from Hawaiian English dialects)

“I never ain’t gonna get no more.”                     I won’t ever get anymore.  (from various southern dialects)

“I saw one person. They had a hat.”                  I saw one person. He or she had a hat. (from the standard American dialect)

Linguistics explores diversity and records what is, not enforce what should be.

Linguistics is broken into five major categories:

Phonetics/Phonology: How language sounds including: speech sounds, the 12 vowels of English, and why there is no ‘t’ in ‘mountain’ when spoken quickly in the main American dialect.

Morphology: Prefixes, suffixes, circumfixes, infixes, and more! Morphology is the addition of units to words to produce new words like ‘anti + dis + establish + ment + ary + ian + ism’ = antidisestablishmentarianism. Check the puzzles section for more.

Syntax: Word ordering to denote meaning. It is the difference in English between “Now get the file I did and send it out” and “I did send it and the file. Get out now!” In most languages in the world, morphology and syntax mix. This is referred to often as morphosyntax.

Semantics: Why can you not say “The dog dies me cantaloupe.”? Semantics studies individual word meanings and how they can be used in a sentence.

Socio/Psycho-Linguistics: The cognitive and social impacts of language. See below for a good description.

Now the second most asked question I get is “what can one do with it?”

With any field there is theory. But the theoretical work is very applicable. There are many fields that use linguistics with the demand on an increase:

Applied Linguistics: Originally the only field that they could figure out how to apply linguistics in, hence the name, applied linguistics involves primarily language teaching.

Sociolinguistics: Why was ‘Ebonics’ laughed at and seen as backwards? Why do we elect presidents who speak with a southern accent, and why did John Kerry go for a running mate from South Carolina? Language is full of bias and socio-centrism that is largely rampant even in the most educated and accepting people of the country because many don’t realize that it exists. One of the things sociolinguistics does is try to bring this to light.

Dialectology: The study of different dialects can map past migration movements, and analyze socio-political standings of populations. It has much overlap with sociolinguistics and has applications in political science, history, and anthropology.

Cognitive Sciences: The best way we can currently analyze the working of a brain is to study its complex output: language. By understanding more about language, how we use language and how we acquire it, much is revealed about brains actually function. This is also referred to as Psycholinguistics.

Historical Linguistics: Although the field has been the main focus of linguistics for most of the history of the field, it has helped trace past movements of people and helped understand contacts between different cultural groups. For example, through the work of historical linguistics, we can trace Hindi and Iranian back to the same family as the European languages, while Arabic and Hebrew come from a wholly separate family.

Computational Linguistics: This is probably the most expansive field for linguistics. It is divided into two fields: written and spoken language. Written language computational linguistics, or Natural Language Processing as it is often called, involves online translators, dictionary construction, Artificial Intelligence, computer aided learning and automatic text summarization among others. Spoken language processing involves speech recognition, computer generated speech, and a number of other things to do away with keyboards.

Pronunciation Instruction: Although it falls somewhere between Speech Pathology and Applied Linguistics, pronunciation can be taught by a linguist, especially with the aide of the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet).