What Is Philology?

Philology is the study of language through the use of classic or historical texts. This field of study is named for the ancient Greek terms representing love and words, so that philology can be translated as a love of learning, or love of words. People who study philology are primarily concerned with historical language, rather than modern language development. Rather than focus on oral tradition, philology professionals concentrate on ancient written documents and texts, including both famous and everyday writings.

This field shares many features with linguistics, leading many people to confuse these two distinct methods of studying language. Linguistics tends to be highly scientific, and includes a great deal of technical analysis. It is also based primarily around language structure, and relies on both written and oral sources. Philology tends to be less scientific, and instead relies on a combination of psychology, anthropology, and history to analyze words and languages.

One major focus of philology is the historical development, or origins of a language. Academics within this field work to trace the roots of a language, and to determine how it spread to different regions or countries. They also attempt to analyze how language within a specific historical period relates to events taking place at that time. Finally, they try to see what kind of information or clues that language can provide about the people who spoke it, or about the period or place where it was spoken.

Philology can be broken down into several sub-fields based on the goals and interests of different researchers. Comparative philology is concerned with how languages relate to one another, as well as similarities and differences between them. Those interested in the textual analysis of words use philological principles to analyze literature and to combine multiple versions of a manuscript. This type of study is particularly prevalent in studying the Bible.

Cognitive philology focuses on how historical texts can help define the psychological and intelligence aspects of mankind, or of an individual. In this way, this field includes attributes of psychology and philosophy. Finally, philological researchers may specialize in decipherment, which includes deciphering old texts or even cracking the code of a dead language.

Philologists typically choose to focus on a certain group of languages with similar origins. This is often necessary due to the vast differences in structure, history, and development between eastern and western dialects, for example. Many publications and study programs within this field are geared towards classical romance languages, like Greek and Latin, or towards eastern languages such as Chinese, Sanskrit, or Arabic.