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Overview
Linguist work is about studying language scientifically, including grammar, meaning, sound, spelling, language change and how people use language in society.
In job descriptions, look for linguistic research, phonetics, semantics, grammar, fieldwork, academic writing, terminology, language data, teaching, translation concepts and communication of research findings.
Explore this occupation
Open in Job ExplorerWhat the work can involve
Linguists study how language is structured, used and changed. Work can include analysing grammar, sound, meaning, spelling, terminology or language data, designing research questions, collecting examples, comparing languages and writing results for academic, public or applied audiences. The setting may be university, research, technology, publishing or language services.
Skills and specializations
Useful skills include linguistics, grammar, phonetics, semantics, scientific methods, research ethics, academic writing and clear communication with non-specialists. Some roles specialize in psycholinguistics, terminology, lexicography, forensic linguistics, fieldwork, computational language data, translation concepts or teaching languages and linguistic theory.
Salary context
Salary context depends on whether the role is academic, research-funded, applied language technology, public-sector language work, publishing, consulting or teaching. Doctoral level, grant responsibility, data skills, project leadership, specialist language knowledge and the balance between research, teaching and applied delivery can all affect positioning.
Career paths
Career paths can move toward researcher, lecturer, terminology specialist, computational linguistics role, lexicographer, language consultant, forensic linguistics support, translation-related specialist or policy and communication work. Many paths depend on building a clear methods profile, publications, language expertise or applied data experience.
Good to know
Linguist jobs can be very different from interpreter or translator jobs. Read adverts for whether the work asks for scientific language analysis, teaching, corpus or data work, terminology databases, field interviews, academic publications or practical language-service delivery. The strongest match depends on methods, languages and setting.
Editorial note
This guide is editorial occupation context. It is not official labour-market statistics or salary data for this exact occupation.
Map overview
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O*NET relationships
See occupations connected to this ESCO occupation in the official O*NET–ESCO mapping. The relationship type comes from the source and is not a ranking or recommendation.
O*NET relationships: 1
Social Scientists and Related Workers, All Other
19-3099.00
O*NET occupation is broader
The O*NET occupation covers a broader field of work than this ESCO occupation.
Open in O*NETSource and method
These relationships come from the official European Commission O*NET–ESCO crosswalk.
Relationship direction: O*NET occupation to ESCO occupation.
Several O*NET occupations can point to the same ESCO occupation, and one O*NET occupation can point to several ESCO occupations.
AltoTrail preserves the source relationship type. The order is technical and does not show which occupation is best, most relevant or recommended.
AltoTrail validates and presents the source relationships without adding ranking or recommendation semantics.
Alternative labels
americanist
latinist
linguists
linguistic research scientist
slavist
linguistic scholar
tibetologist
africanist
linguistic researcher
germanist
arabist
anglist
japanologist
scandinavist
semitist
sinologist
hellenist
romanist
philologist
computational linguist
terminologist
koreanist
linguistic science researcher
linguistic scientist
baltist
phonetics specialist
indologist
Occupation group
Translators, interpreters and other linguists (2643)
Source facts
| ESCO URI | http://data.europa.eu/esco/occupation/a9c7a04d-807a-41b5-b441-87c73c73c9c5 |
|---|---|
| ESCO code | 2643.4 |
| ISCO group | 2643 |
| Concept type | Occupation |