Sunday 25 November 2012

The Art and Science of Linguistics!

I want to be a PR professional and I am a business graduate. I also want to be a successful business woman and complete my MBA. That being said, I sometimes have moments where my mind wanders back to the days of university when I did a second major in a little known subject called linguistics.
 
During my time at university I was both fortunate and unfortunate enough to do a double major. Learning in two different fields is amazing because it challenges you, it increases your perspective and it gives you knowledge and skills that are broad and in depth. The downsides include an awkward class schedule, huge amounts of stress and conflicting assignment deadlines. Nonetheless, I made it through and met my graduation requirements and have proved that I am capable of many things.

Every now and then I have moments where I sigh and reminisce about linguistics. You may be asking, what is linguistics? Well I won’t give too complicated an explanation, but linguistics is basically the study of language (structure, history, practice) and language use (interactions, societal norms and language learning). Sadly no, we don’t all speak dozens of languages. This is because linguistics is not just about learning languages all day. I wish! That may be a part of it. Rather, linguistics is like any social science, it is heavily research-based and focuses on advancing our knowledge of human language.

I loved my business major, but I would not have done a second major if I didn’t also love linguistics. If you love languages, interactions, communications, research and social sciences I recommend you look into linguistics. Western had a great program. And I can say linguistics has given me some great advantages for PR, including a thorough understanding of syntax, communication strategies, the flow of messages, the role of pragmatics, the social influences on language and the process of researching  information that is hard to find.

I sometimes think it would be great to go back to linguistics. But then I remember that I can actually apply some of my linguistics background in PR and I am thankful for that. And then I also remember that I am still doing something that I love - Public Relations.

Linguistics Joke; Linguistics Comic
P.S. [ai lɑv lIngwistIks]