Don’t get me wrong, i think linguistics is a lot of fun and i get that it’s an interesting field. I just don’t understand what practical applications it has beyond understanding languages better. What do we do with that understanding of languages? Is it purely about seeking knowledge?
It is useful to understand how society works. How we name and talk about things has an effect on how we perceive them. Just some recent examples that come to mind:
What effect does the social media censorship have on our discourse? Does it change how we perceive certain topics when censored words like grape for rape or unalive for suicide sneak into our vocabulary?
It’s also interesting to clear up debates that have been going on for a while. For example there are studies that show that in a dialogue between a man and a woman, the man will talk more and interupt the woman more but afterwards feel like the woman talked more and interupted more often.
The practical application is not direct but more in the form of awareness for problems and guidance on what rules are helpful for us as a society.