What is linguistics? What is it good for?

[s.t. bischoff]

  Hi all,

I've been asked by my Dean to give a talk which he has titled "What is
linguistics? What is it good for?". This talk will be given to a general
audience of faculty, students, and administrators.  I have several ideas how
to approach this, but I wanted to ask folks how they might go about
answering the two questions in the title in such a situation.

Thanks,
Shannon