Linguistics is a science of language. It helps us understand how language is organized, how we are able to communcate with each other and encode our thoughts into a linguistic form. It explains how meaning is encoded in words, phrases, sentences, sounds, and letters. Linguistics has many areas of study, including sociolingusitics that tackles communication issues; psycholinguistics that examines the working of the brain in language acquisiiton and use; discourse analysis that explores our ability to produce cohesive and coherent texts; computational lingusitics that has become essential in the development of computer translations and speech recognition. Majoring in a related discipline and minoring in linguistics can prepare students for a variety of careers, including teaching, translating, foreign service, and social work, or graduate study in linguistics and any of its related sub-fields.
