Talk:Linguist (disambiguation)

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editing talk —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.7.166.174 (talk) 01:25, 9 March 2008 (UTC) are the national 'affiliations' relevant enough for links here? Few of these people seem to study a language related to their nationality. Is that the point?[reply]

Sid Lamb has done innovative work on California Indian Languages. If that isn't as close to American as you can get, I'm not sure what you think.

Related to your question, though, a linguist is rarely going to study just the language that is native to him/her. Linguists study language itself, and use knowledge from studying particular languages as a way to understand the underlying principles in all languages.

your second paragraph tends to agree with me. In answer to your first paragraph, I would say, "specialist in Native American Lanugages" and "specialist in African languages or some such, and original nationality is irrelevant.

Does this article even belong any more? Maybe it should just redirect to linguistics

I'm a bit concerned that this article claims that *most linguists are language teachers, translators and interpreters*, especially as one is not required to have any formal training in linguistics to pursue these careers. Where does this *most* statistic come from?

There are also MANY other careers that linguists might pursue, and given that linguistics is already so misunderstood, it seems doubly unsuitable that this is given as the description of what a linguist is... Fatagina 04:31, 9 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, you do have to have formal qualifications to be a language teacher at any institution worth its salt, or say to be a UN interpreter. It's also possible to be a hobby linguist, but then you can also be a hobby physicist, and I think we all know that's not what we're talking about here.

The "most" comes from even a cursory glance at the membership of the Institute of Linguists. The vast majority of members declare a specialisation either in teaching or in translating/interpreting.

It all depends how we define linguist, and you are right that we need to look at that more closely. However, I am not sure that I would include, say, a company executive who has to operate in two languages under the category "linguist"; linguists are not just people who know and use language (all human beings use at least one, and half the world's population are said to be bilingual) but rather, linguists are people who operate professionally with languages. They are either specialists in linguistics - but outside university teaching there are very few openings for them, so it is a small elite breed - or they are in jobs where they can market themselves primarily as language specialists. And teaching and translating/interpreting are the main careers which obviously fall into that category. --Doric Loon 08:56, 9 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Another note: how is it possible to describe academic linguists in general as 'theoretical'? After all, linguistics is a science, and plenty of work in linguistics is experimental. I'll remove the specific language, if there are no objections. Classicalclarinet 07:11, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

A strange question - of course linguistics is a theoretical discipline, even when it is experimental. One experiments in order to establish theoretical knowledge. Practical linguists are language teachers, translators, etc. We had this before. It's like the relationship beteen physics and engineering. --Doric Loon 05:21, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Not all academic/universitary linguistics is purely theoretical (despite having theoretical underpinnings, of course), just like not all university-based physics is purely theoretical. Even Template:Linguistics distinguishes theoretical linguistics from the descriptive or empirical (data-based) as well as an applied or experimental branch (often crossing over with natural sciences), all university-based. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 18:01, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The polyglot sense[edit]

This has been the topic for discussion on the Linguistics talk page, but the right place to settle the dispute is here, as the sense in question is one that is not dealt with in the article Linguistics.

MrsCaptcha, seeing that the polyglot sense is well established according to all major dictionaries (e.g. OED, M-W), that in fact it precedes the scholar sense historically and that contemporary speakers of English still tend to use linguist in this sense: what is the reason you insist on withholding this piece of information from our users who might in fact be looking for it? Are we and our sources all wrong? What are your sources? —LiliCharlie 14:32, 9 November 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by LiliCharlie (talk • contribs)