The main difference between linguistics and applied linguistics is that linguistics is the scientific study of the structure and development of language, whereas applied linguistics is a branch of linguistics that focuses on the practical usage of language studies.
Linguistics aims to develop people’s understanding of the world, while applied linguistics is about dealing with practical issues regarding language usage.
Key Areas Covered
1. What is Linguistics
– Definition, Features
2. What is Applied Linguistics
– Definition, Features, Uses
3. Difference Between Linguistics and Applied Linguistics
– Comparison of Key Differences
Key Terms
Linguistics, Applied Linguistics
What is Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Moreover, it is about the nature and structure of a language, and it gives a systematic, comprehensive, objective, and precise analysis of all its aspects. This does not involve a specific language but all languages in general. Linguistics is a scientific as well as an academic discipline.
Linguistics also aims to increase people’s knowledge and understanding of the world. It also explores different language-related phenomena like language acquisition, language variation, language changing over time, language process, and storage in the human brain.
Subfields in Linguistics
- Phonetics – the study of speech and sounds
- Phonology – the study of language sound system
- Morphology – the study of word structure
- Syntax – the study of sentence structure
- Semantics – the study of the literal meaning of sentences
- Pragmatics – the study of language in context
Apart from these subfields, there are different kinds of other subfields as well. These include psycholinguistics, which studies how language is processed in the mind, sociolinguistics, which studies the usage of language in society, and historical linguistics, which studies the language-changing process over time, neurolinguistics, which is about the language encoding system in the brain and finally computational linguistics, which is about the computing properties of a language like phonology, syntax, and semantics.
What is Applied Linguistics
Applied linguistics is a branch of linguistics that gives solutions to practical usage of the language. This is a human science because it revolves around human problems. Moreover, applied linguistics is dynamic. Moreover, some academic fields related to this are sociology, information science, natural language processing, anthropology, education, and psychology. In addition, it covers many areas like bilingualism, multilingualism, language pedagogy, discourse analysis, translation, language policy, and planning.
Furthermore, applied linguistics is theory-based and considered a multidisciplinary approach to various language-related problems. This is scientific and educational since it has the science of language as the underlying basis and helps the educational community respectively.
Difference Between Linguistics and Applied Linguistics
Definition
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language, while applied linguistics is a branch of linguistics that gives solutions to practical usage of the language.
Focus
Linguistics is the scientific study of language, whereas applied linguistics provides solutions for real-life language-related problems.
Nature
Some branches of linguistics involve theoretical aspects, but applied linguistics involves the practical application of the language.
Conclusion
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It studies the structure and development of a language. This is a scientific as well as an academic discipline. Moreover, there are subfields in linguistics like phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. Applied linguistics, on the other hand, is a branch of linguistics that gives solutions to practical usage of the language. It also deals with the practical application of language and the problems related to it. Since applied linguistics revolves around human problems, it is a human science. Thus, this is the summary of the difference between linguistics and applied linguistics.
Reference:
1. “Linguistics.” Wikipedia. Wikipedia Foundation.
2. “Applied Linguistics.” Wikipedia. Wikipedia Foundation.
Image Courtesy:
1. “Major levels of linguistic structure” By Thomas, James J. & Cook, Kristin A. , ed. (2005) Illuminating the Path: The Research and Development Agenda for Visual Analytics, National Visualization and Analytics Center, p. 110 ISBN: 0-7695-2323-4. (Public Domain) via Commons Wikimedia
2. “Appliedlinguistics8” By Benjamin Stewart – Own work (CC BY 3.0) via Commons Wikimedia
Leave a Reply