Anna Patterson

November 10, 2017

“Linguistics: Impacts and Impacted”
A major component of human life is linguistics, which has been the way that humans
have communicated for thousands of years. Linguistics has had a huge impact on humans and it
changes from culture to culture and has evolved from its original forms.

One topic of linguistics is descriptive linguistics, the study of how languages are
structured. Some components of descriptive linguistics are phonology, morphology, syntax, and
kinesics. Phonology is the study of the sounds in a language and how they are used. Different
cultures have adopted different sounds or phones, which is one reason that people from different
cultures or languages have a difficult time learning and speaking a new language. Morphology is
the study of how sound sequences convey meaning. The smallest unit that has meaning is a
morph and multiple morphs allow us to form words for us to process and gather information.
Syntax is the ways in which words are arranged to form phrases and sentences. These
arrangement of words give us the ability to communicate and interact with others who are able to
speak the same language. The final component is kinesics, which is the study of communication
by nonverbal means. Some nonverbal communication cues include posture, mannerisms, body
movement, facial expressions, signs, and gestures.

Some researchers explain how culture influences linguistics, but linguistics can also
influence culture. More research has been done on how language is affected by culture, with one
topic being lexical content or vocabulary. Every culture seems to have their own core
vocabulary, that is roughly about the same size, that includes basic words for colors, plants, and
animals. Less research is done on how linguistics influences culture but Edward Sapir and
Benjamin Whorf suggested that language is its own force that can affect how individuals
perceive and conceive reality. For example, the English language is centered around time and
space; however, the Hopi language is centered around more of an ongoing process without time
being broken into segments.

Linguistics reaches in many different directions and has a had a positive impact on
humans; however, some problems do arise. Semantic universality is that language has an infinite
number of combinations that can be expressed in many different ways. On a superficial level,
this is great because linguistics reaches all human and allows for there to be much diversity.
Unfortunately, diversity in language has become more of a barrier. One cultural group has their
own language, with their own slang and dialect, which can be completely different from another
cultural group. With too many differences and people not knowing multiple languages, the
widespread, in-depth knowledge of specific cultures is not known. A second paradox is in
relation to displacement, which is the ability to talk about events that take place outside of the
present. In large, this is a positive because it allows humans to reference many points of our lives
and learn from others’ pasts and possibilities of the future. A major problem with displacement is
that people can take advantage of being able to recall the past to where they either can over or
under exaggerate the past or completely lie about it and the person that is being communicated
with doesn’t know the truth. This could be an internal hardship within an empire that causes it to
collapse because if the emperor is not truthful with his citizens, they could cause a civil uproar.

One aspect that has a positive influence on human evolution is productivity in linguistics.
Productivity allows humans to continually say new things and harbors creativity in language.
This is positive for human evolution because as we evolve we learn new things and if language
was not able to grow to keep up with new discoveries, humans would continue to live in the past
present and not look towards the future.

One aspect that has a negative influence on human evolution is linguistic arbitrariness.
Arbitrariness is the disconnect between sounds, words, and their meaning. This is huge problem
across cultures. Again, different cultures have their own languages and have their own way of
communicating. With so many different sounds, sound combinations, words, meanings, and
languages, understanding different cultures becomes difficult. Even when new languages are
learned, context is still not always understood. For example, a person from Africa, whose
primary language is not English, will struggle even when they do learn the language because
they may try to make a joke but because they cannot completely understand the context of what
they are saying, they joke many not come off as humorous.

Weighing the positive and negatives of linguistics, linguistics is beneficial to humans.

Linguistics allow us to communicate with each other and be the social beings that we are hard
wired to be. Without linguistics, the human population does not make the widespread
advancements that we have accomplished.