> . . . I think it’s easy enough to imagine some people who spoke several languages
> getting nerdy and starting to rigorously analyze one language (or
> compare/contrast two or more languages) and slowly founding a field of
> linguistics.*
. . .
> *Linguistics, as a study, is often considered a subspecialty or off-shoot of the
> Sociological focus of Symbolic Interaction, which analyzes words, gestures,
> behaviors, et cetera in their social contexts. . . .
That’s not a very accurate explanation of the founding of linguistics. When it formed as a field of its own (in the early twentieth century), it came from a least two existing traditions. The first was philology. This is the study of ancient manuscripts. It was necessary to thoroughly understand ancient languages to understand those manuscripts. The second was anthropology. It was necessary to thoroughly understand the language of the “exotic” society that you were studying in order to understand their culture. I don’t know much about “symbolic interaction,” but it didn’t have much to do with the beginnings of linguistics as a field. I think you mean what is usually called semiotics. This is the study of all sorts of “signs,” like words, gestures, etc. You could think of linguistics as a subfield of that in some sense, but that’s not how linguistics formed as a field.
> Linguists of the modern sort who have PHD’s in Linguistics are found in ivory
> towers, mico-analyzing languages or facets thereof.
And trying to find generalizations about how all languages work. If linguists did nothing except write papers in which they analyzed a single language, that wouldn’t be much of a coherent field. What they strive to do is find generalizations that apply to all languages and to find unified ways to describe those languages. Calling anything a “ivory tower” field is silly, I think. It’s no more ivory tower than, say, astronomy. Those are real objects we see in the night sky, and we want to explain what they are and how they work. Similarly, those are real things that people say (and/or write), and we want to explain how those things they say work.
IMHO, in terms of diplomacy and international relations , speaking another language is an excellent bonus and will help you get jobs. But unless you happen to speak a specific obscure language that happens to be in demand completely fluently, it’s not really a primary qualification.
So if one were of a mind that linguistics might be an interesting field, would any of you know of a good introductory work one could read to get a better understanding of what the field is actually about?
My Anthro/Archaeology/Linguistics degree prepared me for reading books at lunch that the other guys in the factory, later call center, thought looked boring. Get a degree in business and a language or two of choice, and save Linguistics for lunchtime and evenings–a gentlewoman’s hobby–like it always was. Like any other “ivory tower” field, there are next to no jobs in it.
ETA: When one gets deep enough into it, it stops being fun. Read any of Chomsky’s serious papers and see.
dropzone, you are the only person I’ve heard of who majored in linguistics and then worked in a factory. There are lots of jobs that linguistics can prepare you for. Look at the link I give in post #13.