Why Linguistics?
You may be wondering — why do we do what we do? Why research linguistics and language development? Read on to hear senior lab member Clinton Tak’s take on the subject!
Almost every student studying a liberal arts major will at some point face the question, “Why would you ever study ____?” Family reunions, dinners back home, meeting your significant other’s parents: all danger zones for one of the most dreaded and most difficult questions of all. For linguistics majors (and I’m sure many other liberal arts majors), however, this question shouldn’t be difficult at all.
The primary goal of top colleges in the United States is to prepare their students for the working world. To succeed in the modern day work place, employees need to above all be good communicators. While any liberal arts major encourages students to write and communicate effectively, a degree in linguistics encourages students to ask questions that many others would never think of: things like “what makes one sentence sound ‘right’ but another sound ‘wrong’?” or “how will this be read and understood by someone that speaks Spanish, French, or Italian natively?”. The deep understanding of semantics, syntax, and even dialectology that comes along with a linguistics degree are critically important to communicating effectively in the ever increasing interconnectedness of the modern workplace.
Beyond soft skills, a linguistics degree provides one with many important hard skills needed today. From translating, to working in natural language processing and AI systems, to analysis, the careers open to linguists are abundant. Government agencies like the CIA, NSA, and FBI are in need of translators who both understand the language as well as the cultural nuances that accompany that language. Companies like Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google employ hundreds of linguists to develop their speech recognition and processing systems like Siri, Cortana, Alexa, and Google Assistant. Lastly, tech giants like Facebook and Twitter need linguists to better analyze and gain insights from the swath of data pouring in from users every day. Linguists are pushing the world forward every day in myriad ways, and enabling companies to do unprecedented things.
Lastly, if you’re like me, you value the beauty of cold, hard statistical data. According to the Law School Admissions Council, 91% of linguistics undergraduate majors who apply to law school are admitted, with an average LSAT score of 160 (out of 180 possible). This sets linguistics above other typical pre-law majors like Political Science, Economics, and Philosophy, which each have average LSAT scores of 153, 158, and 157 respectively. And even if you aren’t planning on ever going to law school, the analytical problem-solving and critical thinking skills that help Linguistics majors outscore Political Science, Econ, or Philosophy majors on the LSAT carry over into the working world every day.
Choosing a college major is often an incredibly stressful and demanding decision to make. Defending your choice to others shouldn’t be. Studying Linguistics for its own sake has many merits, but the skills developed as a linguistics major are worth keeping in mind too. There is so much important work being done every day by linguists in and out of industry, and I encourage anyone interested in linguistics to consider the skills that they will develop and how those skills can be used to impact the world.
