Linguist (academic)

Academic linguists study language — its structure, history, acquisition, and use — across areas such as syntax, phonetics, semantics, and sociolinguistics. The work combines analysing language data and corpora, sometimes conducting fieldwork with speakers of under-documented languages, and developing theories about how language works.

They work in universities and research institutes, often teaching alongside research. The role suits analytically minded people fascinated by the patterns underlying human language and willing to do careful, sometimes painstaking, documentation and analysis.