About Language Science

What Do Language Scientists DO?

Science, of course!

Language science – more formally known as the science of linguistics – is a branch of the social sciences, which also include anthropology, sociology, psychology, history, economics and other fields focusing on inquiry into the characteristics and behaviors of human individuals and communities. Language scientists use scientific tools, perspectives and methods to systematically explore different aspect of how humans use language to communicate.

Language Science in Everyday Life

Language scientists start by observing and asking questions about language the same way that we all do. In a very fundamental sense, we’re ALL language scientists!

From the day we’re born, we work hard to make sense of the language patterns we hear and see used around us. We figure out how new vocabulary, sentence patterns, word meanings and other features of language fit in with what we already know. Our brains do most of this work automatically, so we don’t often think of it as science.

By systematically studying the processes of language and language learning – i.e. by actively doing language science – we can raise our awareness of how different forms of language are used in our communities, schools, workplaces and families. This awareness can help us become more mindful and effective communicators wherever we go.

Language Science in the K-12 Classroom

A lot of people formally study this fascinating and useful field of science in college or graduate school, but very few get the chance to do so during elementary, middle or high school. The goal here at Language Science Central is to change that!

By empowering students with tools to understand and think critically about how they and others use language to communicate, we can set them up for success in both their academic and personal lives.

By empowering teachers with frameworks and curriculum to teach about language in an inclusive, equitable and inquiry-driven way, we can create classroom communities where speakers from all backgrounds and abilities are welcome and can thrive.

Getting Started with Language Science

As a classroom teacher, getting started with Language Science is easy. You can integrate as much or as little Language Science into your teaching as you want to and as suits the needs of your students and the school community. Some of the ways to bring Language Science into K-12 learning are:

• Maintaining your current curriculum & methods while reading and doing professional development in Language Science and related areas like inquiry-based learning methods, critical literacy, and how ELA relates to equity & justice issues in education. If you’re already doing this, keep up the great work!

• Normalizing and celebrating linguistic diversity by teaching your students about dialects and including examples in your regular grammar and literature instruction that showcase students’ own dialects and others they may not be familiar with. Representation matters!

• Teaching a lesson (or a few) on phonology, speech production and how we transcribe the sounds of English to raise students’ awareness of regional and cultural phonological diversity and to support a strong grasp of the sound-symbol connection in reading.

• Introducing some key Language Science concepts early in the year, then occasionally prompting students to put on their language scientist hats and critically reflect on the way they observe the language patterns you’re teaching used in diverse real-world contexts.

• Supplementing your current curriculum with weekly inquiry activities in which your students do the work of language scientists by exploring aspects of real-world language use in their communities.

• Supplementing your current curriculum with an end-of-unit or end-of-semester problem-based group project in which students use Language Science to study language-related issues in their communities like bullying, hate speech, microaggressions, inter-dialect grammar differences, or access to translation resources for non-English speakers.

• Incorporating semantics and pragmatics tools into literature instruction to deepen students’ critical analysis of literature and to center readers as active participants in cultural exchanges of meaning with the authors they read.

• Teaching and modeling pragmatics analysis strategies to help students make sense of fictional characters’ and real-world humans’ interactions as acts of social communication.

• Building and teaching inquiry-based units to explore the five levels of grammar and including literary works and assessments that align with the concepts and tools learned in each unit. 

However you choose to incorporate Language Science into your teaching, I want to support you! Please drop me a line at MsMac@LanguageScienceCentral if you have questions or requests for resources.