He insisted that linguists should study the complete system of a language at some point in time, and then examine how the entire system changes over time. "The pioneer linguist Ferdinand de Saussure criticized scholars who studied the history of a part of a language, dissociated from the whole to which it belongs.
"Like a biologist studying the structure of cells, a linguist studies the structure of language: how speakers create meaning through combinations of sounds, words, and sentences that ultimately result in texts-extended stretches of language (e.g. " Linguists study many facets of language: how sounds are produced and heard in physical acts of speech, conversational interaction, the different uses of language by men and women and different social classes, the relation of language to the functions of the brain and memory, how languages develop and change, and the uses of language by machines to store and reproduce language." Some study language in the head, some study language in society." Some linguists focus on structure, others on meaning. Some study the differences among languages. Some study the design features that the grammars of all the world's languages share. Different linguists study language in different ways. " Linguists spend their time studying what language is and what it does. (Adrian Akmajian, Richard Demerts, Ann Farmer, and Robert Harnish, Linguistics: An Introduction to Language and Communication. "What is linguistics, then? Fundamentally, the field is concerned with the nature of language and (linguistic) communication."
Others believe that linguists are language experts who can help you decide whether it is better to say 'It is I' or 'It is me.' Yet it is quite possible to be a professional linguist (and an excellent one at that) without having taught a single language class, without having interpreted at the UN, and without speaking any more than one language. "Some believe that a linguist is a person who speaks several languages fluently.