What is linguistics the study of?

Question

What is linguistics the study of?

Answer 1

Linguistics is the study of languages.  Language is the living history of  a culture, and reflects what is important to a people, their environment, politics, social structure and spiritual beliefs, among other things.  

Answer 2

It's the scientific study of language. Broadly speaking, linguistics can be seen as an attempt to answer two questions:

1) What is language like?

2) Why is it like that?

This is similar to the aims of most sciences: biologists attempt to come to an understanding of what living organisms are like and why they are like that, while physicists investigate and attemp to explain (as far as is possible) the nature of the universe.

As other answerers have said, some linguists may focus on a particular language, but most focus their research on the human language faculty in general. One of the major divisions in research interests — though this is a divide in terms of interests; they are not opposed — is between the study of meaningful units and constructions (syntax and semantics) and the study of meaningless units and constructions (phonetics and phonology), but there are many subfields within linguistics, some of which may cut across this divide.

Answer 3

Language.

Answer 4

Language

Answer 5

Linguistics: science of human language, in a general way of speaking. Linguists often don't specialize themselves in the study of one single language, but on the main rules that can be found in all languages. You can divide linguistics into four areas: phonetics (how sounds are produced by the human throat and tongue, and interact), morphology (how grammatical functions are expressed in language), syntax (how phrases are built) and semantics (how meaning is conveyed by words).