ABSTRACT
One of the choices facing linguists, at some point in their career, is whether to take a ‘pure’ or an ‘applied’ direction, or somehow to strike a balance between the two. The terms are more appropriate to such subjects as mathematics and chemistry, but they do indicate two very different reasons for studying language. The ‘pure’ reason is what brought me, and I imagine most linguists, into the subject: the intrinsic fascination of language. I want to find out how language works, how it evolved and diversified, how it varies within society, how the brain represents it, how children learn it (or fail to), how languages differ, how we speak, and write, and sign . . . There are a thousand such questions awaiting exploration, and several thousand windows of exploration provided by the languages of the world, each with a unique structure and history, and expressing a unique vision of what it means to be human. Even the smallest features of pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary contain intricacies which can easily occupy an intellectual lifetime. All this is the study of language as an end in itself. And that is what linguists usually mean by ‘linguistics’. They don’t use the adjective ‘pure’, unless they have a contrast with ‘applied’ at the back of their minds.
