Etymologies of 'linguistics' and 'language'

[Keith Johnson]

Does it matter very much if the new stream is called "linguistics"?  If the name is the real issue then you might just call it "language studies" and suddenly overcome all objections.  

Something tells me though that this is not an argument about the name of a new course of study, but instead about the course itself.  It sounds like you all need to have a conversation about whether Haifa should be in the business of training linguists or not.  And that might be a conversation that should have wider involvement across the university, not limited to just your department.


On Oct 13, 2012, at 3:42 AM, john <john at research.haifa.ac.il> wrote:

> 
> 
> Dear Funknet Colleagues, 
> 
> We (linguists at the University of
> Haifa) are in the midst of a truly inane confrontation with the
> literature specialists in our department (there are 5 of us and 6/7 of
> them). We are attempting to establish a linguistics stream with a
> specific curriculum, organizational autonomy, etc. (parallel to the
> literature stream which already exists in the department) and they are
> rejecting this on the reasoning that we are a 'language' department, not
> a 'linguistics' department. They don't seem to recognize the absurdity
> of this argument, and because there are more of them than us, it seems
> that we need to argue with them on their level. So what is the etymology
> of these words? After a little research on the internet, it looks to me
> like they both came into English through French, ultimately from Latin
> 'lingua', but 'language' was the regular historical development whereas
> 'linguistic' was a later Latinization which was adopted by those
> developing the scientific study of language, because Latinate words
> sound more scientific. Is this right, and could any of you suggest
> references to this of the type that would impress literature
> specialists? 
> 
> Thanks, 
> 
> John 
>