# Linguistics Linguistics is the systematic study of language: its sounds, forms, structures, meanings, uses, histories, and social variation. Its major concerns include phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, discourse, and sociolinguistics. In influence analysis, linguistics helps distinguish what a message literally states from what it presupposes, implies, frames, repeats, or makes socially permissible. Computational linguistics extends this inquiry through formal and statistical methods. Related: [[wiki/Computational Linguistics|Computational Linguistics]], [[wiki/Narrative Intelligence|Narrative Intelligence]], [[wiki/Semantics|Semantics]], [[wiki/Pragmatics|Pragmatics]].