Although many Americans consider this an abstract field, the study of language and meaning has, in fact, become a center for interdisciplinary interests and discussion. Its reach includes fields of communication and information processing linked to artificial intelligence and computers, questions of cognition and development from psychology and education, questions of meaning and truth from philosophy issues of style and voice in literature and questions of society and culture. In all these, American scholars and thinkers have made important contributions to our understanding of language in general, as well as of its roles within American culture.

Indeed, from the early days of the American nation, scholars confronted questions of what language and identity meant, even if only to establish American standards for lexicon (Noah Webster) or education. Descriptive linguists later confronted the unique linguistic heritage of Native Indian tribes, documenting them in some cases as they disappeared. Anthropologists Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf also drew important contrasts between the worldviews embodied in these languages and those of Western Europe. Other approaches stressed function and relation among parts of language, while American linguistics learned from European structural linguistics in the 1930s and 1940s.

Noam Chomsky fostered a revolution in American linguistics in the 1950s and 1960s with transformational-generative grammar, which has thrived as both tool and theoretical arena. His stresses on individual effort, mechanisms of production, and grammaticality as accepted speech all evoke themes of American individualism and community. Some critics have argued that his concerns with free will and truth also intersect with his political activism.

Since the 1970s, linguists have also explored relations of language, society meaning and change. William Labov used sociological methods to document social divisions and changes in language; he also worked with black English formations as variations or alternatives to Standard English, a theme that has drawn conflicting attention from scholars, educators and families (see Rickford 1999). John Gumperz examined the strategic construction of conversations. Others have focused on the politics and ideologies of language, the nature and changes of bilingual communities, and critical relations of language, gender and power. The last has reached a wide popular audience in self-help books and works by Deboran Tannen, as well as feminist and gay critics.

Recent work can be reviewed in central journals of the field, including Language and Language in Society.