Linguistics: An Overview

In this episode, Sara gives an overview of the different branches of linguistics and coins the term "perinatal linguistics" to describe the work at the intersection of birth work and applied linguistics. As a perinatal linguist, Sara uses the knowledge, theories, and frameworks of linguistics to describe situations and experiences within pregnancy and birth and aims to improve the pregnancy and birth experience for birthgivers.

URLS mentioned in this episode:

www.summitbirthutah.com/birthwords

TRANSCRIPT:

Hi. Welcome, welcome to the second episode of the Birth Words podcast, where we talk about linguistics.

I think linguistics is one of those words that people have heard, but are kind of only generally aware of what it really means. And to be honest, those that study linguistics don't necessarily all agree. So we'll talk generally about what linguistics means.

The first clarification that I want to give is that linguistics is not about rules about how you should speak. But it's about studying instead, how people do speak. Why do they speak in the ways that they do, and to what effect? What difference does it make when people speak in certain ways, and what underlies the choices that people make in the words that they choose? So in linguistics, we talk about language as a semiotic system: Signs are used to communicate meaning. In some languages, like American Sign Language, this is very obvious—that literally a sign is used to communicate meaning. But when you think about language, that's really all that words are as well: a sign. A verbal sign that communicates meaning to those in a given community that use the same signs to communicate similar meaning. And it's not always the same for every person. But there's generally a level of mutual intelligibility among speakers of the same language, and specifically the same dialect of a language.

So, some questions to consider as we think about language as a semiotic system: (Again, that means signs are used to communicate to meaning.) Questions we can ask: what meaning is being communicated? Is the meaning that's being communicated the intended meaning? And what effect does it have on the hearer? Is it empowering or disempowering to the hearer? Is it respectful? Is it a language, a dialect that your interlocutor, the person that you're speaking with, also speaks? Or is there some interplay of different native dialects going on?

So I turned today for my introductory linguistics episode to a favorite textbook from college. And back when I thought that I was going to study English and minor in editing, I took a basic course in English language and the textbook for the course was Linguistics for Non-Linguists. And I loved it. I underlined like way too much really, really nerdy stuff in it. Kept it on the shelf for years. And I plan to use it as a reference for this podcast quite a bit, as its title is Linguistics for Non-Linguists, and non-linguists are my target audience for this podcast.

So Parker and Riley, the authors of the book, tell us that linguistic theory is “the study of the psychological system of language.” And they clarify “psychological system” to mean “the internalized, unconscious knowledge that enables a speaker to produce and understand utterances in his or her native language.” So again, when we speak, there's so much going on underneath it that's internalized and unconscious, that enables us to communicate.

And so linguists really look at,

How is that meaning communicated?

To what effect? and

Why is it communicated in the way that it is? and

What does it all mean?

So linguists study observable data, namely how people are speaking. They make hypotheses about what it indicates about the speakers’ internal psychological linguistic system, and then they make theories to attempt to explain the system. There are lots of branches of linguistics. Pragmatics means how language is used to communicate within a context. Semantics looks at the meaning of words, sentences and phrases. Syntax is the study of phrases, clauses and sentences. Morphology is the study of word formation. You notice we're getting narrower and narrower with each of these categories. Phonology is the study of sound systems of language and pronunciation.

And then there are other lots and lots of other branches that we can look at with linguistics. We can talk about linguistic variation among different social different regions, ethnicities and genders. We can study language acquisition—how does that happen? What are the norms? What happens when there's an intersection of different language communities? And we can talk about language processing. How do we understand one another through language? Psycholinguistics looks a...