3 Studying language scientifically
1.3 Studying language scientifically
We said that linguistics is the science of human language. When we say that linguistics is a science, that doesn’t mean you need a lab coat and a microscope to do linguistics. Instead, what it means is that the way we ask questions to learn about language uses a scientific approach.
The scientific way of thinking about language involves making systematic, empirical observations. That word empirical means that we observe data to find the evidence for our theories. All scientists make empirical observations. Entomologists observe the life cycles and habitats of insects. Chemists observe how substances interact. Linguists observe how people use their language. Just like entomologists and chemists, linguists aim for an accurate description of the phenomenon they’re studying. And like other scientists, linguists strive to make observations that are not value judgments. If an entomologist observes that a certain species of beetle eats leaves, she’s not going to judge that the beetles are eating wrong, and tell them that they’d be more successful in life if only they ate the same thing as ants. Ideally, the same would be true of linguists — we wouldn’t go around telling people how they should or shouldn’t use language. Of course, like all scientists, and like all humans, linguists have biases that often prevent us from reaching this ideal. But the goal for doing language science is to do so with a descriptive approach to language, not a prescriptive approach, to describe what people do with their language, but not to prescribe how they should or shouldn’t do it.
For example, you could describe English plurals using the following statement:
“Adding -s to a noun allows it to refer to many of something, like apples, books, or shoes.”
Or you could prescribe how you think people should form plurals this way:
“Because the word virus is derived from Latin, you should pluralize it as viri, not viruses.”
This last prescription statement takes the form of a biased directive approach to language use. It tells us how something should be done, instead of how it is really done in the real word. A descriptive version of this statement could be the following:
“English words that end in -us are generally derived from latin. Some words tend to have a plural form with an -i ending such as octopus-octopi, alumnus-alumni, but others usually follow the regular English pluralization processes such as campus-campuses, bonus-bonuses, virus-viruses.”
This latter statement is a descriptive one. It is a much faithful representation of what actually happens in the language and it is not presented as a rule that everyone should follow.
When we’re doing linguistics, our goal is to make descriptive, empirical observations of language. But one challenge to being a language scientist is that a lot of what you’re studying is hard to observe. Unlike our entomologist friends, we can’t just go out to the garden and poke