Language is the common thread that runs through every human enterprise. Undoubtedly humanity’s most significant invention, language makes possible the safeguarding of history, the transmission of literature and theater, and the encapsulation of philosophy. It is through language that visual and performing arts, as well as mathematics, are analyzed, and language shares with them the quality of symbolic expression. Cultural and political organization, as well as commerce, cooperative work, architecture, and social planning, are made possible through the manipulation of written and oral language forms. Language also allows us to peek into the psyche and is the main vehicle of both education and propaganda. Furthermore, as the embodiment of multiple sophisticated physiological and brain processes, language represents the greatest achievement of human biological evolution.
Due to the primacy of language in all aspects of human life, linguistics is necessarily a multidisciplinary activity. Although a core group of theoretical linguists work on comprehensive analyzes of the internal syntactic, morphological, and phonological structures of particular languages, an even larger group of academics approaches language from a multitude of interdisciplinary perspectives. Among these are linguistic anthropologists, sociolinguists, psycholinguists, philosophers of language, neurolinguists, and historical and comparative linguists. Linguistics has a vibrant applied arm that directs its attention to such matters as translation and interpretation, first and second language pedagogy, literacy, language planning and policy-making, discourse analysis, cognitive processing, communication intercultural and speech pathology.
Unfortunately, despite the centrality of language, linguistics as a discipline is relatively unknown to the general public. Misperceptions of linguists as polyglots or grammarians persist in the public consciousness. Even at the post-secondary level, linguistics is only explored by a limited population, perhaps because people tend to take language for granted.
At the University of Puerto Rico at Río Piedras (like many other universities), there are numerous linguistics courses available within the Department of English (at the BA, MA, and Ph.D. levels) and in the Graduate Program in Linguistics. In addition, courses on linguistic topics are offered in Education, Philosophy, Hispanic Studies, Psychology and Anthropology. The motivated student has many opportunities to be exposed to linguistics, although relatively few do.
What is needed is serious consideration of the ways in which linguistics can be made more attractive and acceptable to students who may be frightened by arcane symbols and abstruse theory. Linguistic concepts and language awareness need to be incorporated (in age-appropriate ways) into primary and secondary curricula, thus preparing students to approach the field with curiosity and fearlessness at the college level. Since language is the universal property of humanity, linguistics should be promoted as a vital tool to understand the human essence in all its manifestations, the last multidisciplinary effort.