Nothing characterizes the nature of humankind more than the ability to use language.
In linguistics, you study languages not to read, write, or speak them but to understand how they work, how they change, how children learn them, and how they are used. Linguists, therefore, see language as an intricate system of interacting semantic, grammatical, phonological, and pragmatic rules and principles to study, describe, and ultimately to understand. Because the kinds of questions that we can ask about language are so diverse and touch on the domain of so many different disciplines, the concerns in linguistics overlap those of other language sciences. This is what makes linguistics in a broad sense a truly interdisciplinary field. Therefore, half of the required courses in the curriculum are taken in basic linguistics courses in the English department, and the other half are taken in cognate linguistic courses in other departments such as anthropology, psychology, communication, theatre, philosophy, and foreign language departments.