What is linguistics? - статья на английском языке

Linguistics may be defined as the scientific study of language. This definition, unexceptionable as far as it goes, is one that will be found in a large number of textbooks and popular introductions to the subject. The term 'linguistics' was first used in the middle of the nineteenth century; and there are many scholars currently engaged in research or teaching in the field of linguistics who would say that the subject itself is not much older than the term 'linguistics'. They would claim that earlier linguistic research (in Europe at least) was amateurish and unscientific. Now it is a matter of legitimate dispute just how far back one should go in tracing the history of what we would today recognize as 'linguistics'. We-.shall not go into this question here. But one point should be appreciated. The investigation of language, like the investigation of many other phenomena (including those that fall within the scope of what are commonly called the 'physical' sciences), has been subject to various changes in the interpretation of the words 'science' and 'scientific', not only in the remoter past, but also more recently. <...>
One topic that commonly finds a place in discussions of the status of linguistics as a science is its 'autonomy', or independence of other disciplines. Linguists have tended to be somewhat insistent on the need for autonomy, because they have felt that, in the past, the study of language was usually subservient to and distorted by the standards of other studies such as logic, philosophy and literary criticism. For this reason the editors of Saussure's posthumous Cours de linguistique generate (the publication of which is often taken to mark the beginning of 'modern linguistics') added to the text of the master its programmatic concluding sentence, to the effect that linguistics should study language 'for its own sake' or 'as an end in itself (Saussure, 1916).
Whatever might be the precise meaning of the phrase 'language as an end in itself, the principle of 'autonomy', as it has been applied in linguistics over the last fifty years, has led to a more general conception of the nature and function of language than was possible in the earlier periods of linguistic scholarship. An equally, if not more, important consequence of the principle of 'autonomy' is that it promoted the study of language as a formal system.<...>
Now that linguistics has established its credentials as a nature academic discipline with its own methodology and criteria of relevance (and one can reasonably claim that this is the case), there is no longer the same need to insist upon the principle of 'autonomy'. The last few years have seen an increased interest amongst philosophers, psychologists, anthropologists, literary critics and representatives of other disciplines in linguistic theory and methodology. Some scholars consider that the time may be ripe for the incorporation of the theory of language into a more embracing synthesis of science and philosophy.<...>
Synchronic and diachronic. Throughout the nineteenth century linguistic research, was very strongly historical in character. One of the principal aims of the subject was to group languages into 'families' (of which the Indo-European family is the best known) on the basis of their independent development from a common source. The description of particular languages was made subsidiary to this general aim; and there was little interest in the study of the language of a given community without reference to historical considerations.
Saussure's distinction between the diachronic and the synchronic investigations of language is a distinction between these two opposing viewpoints. Diachronic (or historical) linguistics studies the development of languages through time: for example, the way in which French and Italian have 'evolved' from Latin. Synchronic linguistics (sometimes referred to rather inappropriately as 'descriptive' linguistics) investigates the way people speak in a given speech community at a given point in time. It is now generally agreed that (due attention having been given to the definition of 'speech comminity') the history of a language is in principle irrelevant to its synchronic description: but this fact was not generally appreciated by earlier linguists.
(From "New Horizons in Linguistics" edited by John Lyons)