Linguistics is the study of language, as contrasted with knowledge of a specific language. Formal linguistics is the study of the structures and processes of language, or how it works and is organized. Different approaches to formal linguistics include traditional or prescriptive, structural, and generative or transformational perspectives. Formal linguistics includes five principal areas of study: phonetics; phonology; morphology; syntax; and semantics. Sociolinguistics is the study of language as a social and cultural phenomenon. Its major areas of study are: language variation; language and social interaction (with pragmatics, discourse analysis, ethnography of communication as subfields); language attitudes; and language planning. Psycholinguistics is the study of the relationship between linguistic and psychological behavior. Psycholinguists study first and second language acquisition and how humans store and retrieve linguistic information, referred to as verbal processing. In applied linguistics, the findings of theoretical linguistic study are applied to the solution of practical language problems and issues in everyday language use. (MSE)