Linguistics > Gallery

Humans instinctively communicate, as the conversation of these men in Naples, Italy shows.  

People in Port Vila, Vanuatu express their language equivalents for the pictured items. Vanuatu has over 100 languages, most of which are unwritten.  

I love you in American Sign Language.  

Stopping and talking is central to human culture.  

An example of written language - in this case, English.  

This lecture on American Sign Language is being conducted in ASL. Today, much research on sign language comes from linguists who are themselves deaf.  

Language may be written using different orthographies using modern technology. This is a Taiwanese computer keyboard allowing input in Chinese characters, romanised Chinese languages and a script explicitly indicating Chinese pronunciation.  

Why this shop name in Japan? Linguists also investigate how language is used, but how it is 'abused' is left to others.  

Phonetics often involves modern technology to analyse speech, providing evidence for linguists on the nature of spoken language. This spectrogram as used in acoustic phonetics shows the frequencies of vibrations involved in the production of six British English vowels by an adult male native speaker: from left to right, the vowels as in bee, sue, herd, or, bar and buy. The bands of energy (formants) are distinctive for each vowel; for example, the lower the bottom formant ('F1'), the higher the vowel is articulated in the mouth. The greater the distance between F1 and the second-lowest 'F2' formant correlates with how far back in the mouth the vowel is produced. This image was created using the Praat freeware program.  

One reason to study linguistics is its importance in human culture - so important is this urge to communicate that it is often depicted in art.  

Panel from an Inuit language exposition at the 2006 Winter Universiade Games in Turin, Italy.  

Vernacular languages literacy materials used on Pentecost Island in Vanuatu.  

Newer streets signs in parts of western Scotland display names in Scottish Gaelic above English - older signs are in English only. The promotion or proscription of languages is called language planning and is one topic studied in sociolinguistics.