ABSTRACT
Linguistics is the study of language, including the structure of languages and how people use language in social contexts. Think of an engine: physicists and engineers study the engine’s structure and how people use engines in their everyday lives in order to build a theory of how engines work, to determine what people need engines for, to fix engines, and to build better engines. Likewise, linguists study languages in order to build a theory of how language works, to determine how and for what purposes people use language, and even to fix language “problems.”
