One's favorite research depends on the researcher's leaning. For instance, you may be versed in one or more of the linguistic levels of phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, which will constitute your favorite research area. Theory-wise, your favorite theory depends on influences you underwent during your education, readings, and training. For example, you may be a formalist, a functionalist, or a cognitivist. Again content-wise, you may be interested in analyzing book, media, or talk-based data. And even in the area of talk, for instance, you may want to deal with parent-child, teacher-student, patient-doctor, etc., using one or more linguistic levels and a particular theory or a hyphenated perspective such as morpho-syntax, cognitive-pragmatics, etc.

I hope that this reply has been of some help to you.

One's favorite research depends on the researcher's leaning. For instance, you may be versed in one or more of the linguistic levels of phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, which will constitute your favorite research area. Theory-wise, your favorite theory depends on influences you underwent during your education, readings, and training. For example, you may be a formalist, a functionalist, or a cognitivist. Again content-wise, you may be interested in analyzing book, media, or talk-based data. And even in the area of talk, for instance, you may want to deal with parent-child, teacher-student, patient-doctor, etc., using one or more linguistic levels and a particular theory or a hyphenated perspective such as morpho-syntax, cognitive-pragmatics, etc.

I hope that this reply has been of some help to you.

I agree with Zouheir Maalej, in that I consider the question to be subjective. Some delight in the study of common linguistic subfields, such semantics, syntax, pragmatics, morphology, phonetics and phonology. The approach one takes is important to consider as well, as those studying theoretical linguistics may be intrigued by different questions than those dealing with linguistics in a more functional manner, such as specialists in semiotics, translation, speech-language pathology, literary criticism, forensic linguistics, computational linguistics, language documentation and more. There are topics, however, that are still pondered by many linguistics today. The idea of idiolects — that is, an individual's distinctive utilization style of language — is still a matter of debate, as are questions pretinent to the innateness of language in human beings. With regard to linguistic epistemology, many scholars also debate the borders separating dialects from languages, as these are seldom clearly defined.

In sum, the research passions vary between linguist to linguist. The aforementioned are a few examples of questions linguists ask, though they are only the tip of the iceberg.

I agree wtith Dr. Zouheir. There is also sociolinguistic researches.

Based on my experience, scholars within my field have gravitated in the direction of historical linguistics. Within historical linguistics the emphasis is usually on phonological theory. A very respected phonetician once told me that much of the phonological theory is “phonological fantasy.” I don’t necessarily agree with the professor, but I would like our discipline to become more empirically driven and less theoretical. I think the great unexplored frontier of our discipline is the question of language variation. It represents a poorly understood phenomenon that invites data driven analysis.

I agree with Dr. Zouheir.