The University of Pennsylvania Department of Linguistics is the oldest linguistics department in the United States. Founded in 1947, the primary focus and study of the department of linguistics is as follows. "Linguistics is the scientific study of human language, from the sounds and gestures of speech up to the organization of words, sentences, and meaning. Linguistics is also concerned with the relationship between language and cognition, society, and history." For example, subject A wrote a short note to subject B that says this: Pull the meat out the fridge. Resources: Wikipedia