Hope this helps

https://www.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/24ook6/why_is_linguistics_important/

Hope this helps

https://www.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/24ook6/why_is_linguistics_important/

Also, see the following link:

https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Linguistics-important

My younger sister and the eldest daughter are linguists.

Among other subjects, they studied eloquence

- and it is impossible to argue with them.

Linguistics makes you analyse what is there in the language, it deals with various levels of language. It makes you eloquent and a good speaker .

Although linguistics is still largely unfamiliar to the educated public, it is a growing and exciting field, with an increasingly important impact on other fields as diverse as psychology, philosophy, education, language teaching, sociology, anthropology, computer science, and artificial intelligence.

Teachers need to know as much as they can about the subject they teach, and linguistics can be one source of this knowledge base. But how useful it is will depend on what kind of linguistics one is talking about and how it is taught. The framework developed by Halliday in his work on functional linguistics is often used in courses for language teachers. Unfortunately many people who may have a Ph.D  in linguistics may have studied linguistic theories that have little relevance to language teaching.

Linguistics is concerned with the nature of language and communication. It deals both with the study of particular languages, and the search for general properties common to all languages or large groups of languages. It includes the following subareas :

--phonetics (the study of the production, acoustics and hearing of speech sounds)

--phonology (the patterning of sounds)

--morphology (the structure of words)

--syntax (the structure of sentences)

--semantics (meaning)

--pragmatics (language in context)

https://linguistics.arizona.edu/content/what-linguistics-and-why-study-it-0

http://www.professorjackrichards.com/importance-of-studying-linguistics/

Mathematical linguistics is a source of many examples: Machine translation, speak recognition, Artificial Intelligence.

Also some important discoveries of Chomsky such as context-free grammars found application in many computer science algorithms (although it turned out that  these kind of grammars  do not describe natural languages).

Given that language is the primary symbolic system employed by humans to accomplish (or to enhance) so many abilities that make humans unique and different from all non-human primates (re: Vygotsky, Bruner, K. Nelson, M.A.K. Halliday, D. Bickerton, M. Tomasello), it is worthy of study to help us understand the cognitive functioning of humans and how we operate within the human condition.  This reason by itself gives linguistics a primacy since it is so ubiquitous and effective in creating the higher psychological functions. That importance established, a comprehensive study of the linguistic phenomenon is easily defended from the most theoretical to the most applied aspects of this symbolic mental operation.

From a more practical aspect, as a discipline linguistics has many foci ranging from formal linguistic theory to several applications oriented to understanding the role of language in establishing and sustaining societal functions (sociolinguistics), pedagogical effectiveness (educational linguistics and bilingualism), human development (language acquisition studies), components of rehabilitation and its efficacy (clinical linguistics), and understanding the impact of language on psychological functioning and skills (psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics). In each of these areas of study, understanding (or the attempt to understand) requires (at least) some focus on the linguistic aspects.  

Thanks, everyone. These are all good ideas, but I need a book that has some of these benefits summed up in articles/chapters. Can you recommend a book or a group of articles (on each of the fields mentioned in your answers)?  

It is one thing to use language; it is quite another to understand how it works. 

(Anthony Burgess, Joysprick)

I don't think that you will find a book or a research article on the importance of linguistics. 

You can look at the following papers and teach from them the sections which discuss the role of sociolinguistics, stylistics, grammar, semiotics,  morphology the importance analysis and so on.

THE STUDY OF LINGUISTIC AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE TO ACTUAL LANGUAGE TEACHING PRACTICE

file:///C:/Users/ALsayra/Downloads/16-50-1-PB.pdf

The role of linguistics in the philosophy of language

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~ssmoss/Moss%20-%20The%20Role%20of%20Linguistics%20in%20the%20Philosophy%20of%20Language.pdf

Grammar is the heart of language: grammar and its role in language learning among Finnish university students

https://jyx.jyu.fi/dspace/bitstream/handle/123456789/47198/296.pdf?sequence=1

The Neat Summary of Linguistics

https://www.uni-due.de/ELE/NeatSummaryOfLinguistics.pdf

THE ROLE OF LINGUISTIC THEORIE S IN LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

https://digilib.phil.muni.cz/bitstream/handle/11222.digilib/101335/A_Linguistica_33-1985-1_14.pdf?sequence=1

Role of Semiotics in Linguistics

https://www.ijser.org/researchpaper/Role-of-Semiotics-in-Linguistics.pdf

I teach "Introduction to linguistics". To make sure my students understand the importance of linguistics in their lives, half the course is about applications of Natural language processing (automatic translation, language recognition, word sense disambiguation, spelling corrector etc.) I train them to understand the linguistic magic on their Iphones and computers!

Many thanks, Jamal and Lucie, for the recommendations and links.

Lucie, is this Crystal's book? If so, is there any new edition? 

Linguistics is a very broad discipline and includes many different approaches to the study of language. 

It is a broad area to understand and learn languages.

ITS THE STRUCTURE OF LANGUE/PAROLE

AS A MODEL OF UNDERSTANDING IN SOCIETIES

IT'S ALL IN SEMIOLOGY AND SOCIAL LINGUSISTICS

LEARNING ABOUT THE LANGUAGES YOU CAL LEARN MORE ABOUT THE WORLD AS HUMAN BEING

It makes you an unarguable person. It makes you understand the essence of language.