(treated as sing.) the scientific study of human language with regard to its nature, structure, and use
Linguistics developed in the early 20th cent., its focus on contemporary languages distinguishing it from the earlier study of language history, known as philology. It has since emerged as a major academic discipline, with many branches (e.g. phonetics, grammar, semantics), interdisciplinary connections (for example sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, computational linguistics), and applications (for example in translation, language teaching, and speech pathology) — Professor David Crystal
linguistician /-ʹstish(ə)n/ noun