Why on earth would anyone be a historical linguist??? - or - Why would anyone pay anyone else to be a historical linguist?

Being a student of linguistics, but the child of a blue-collar worker and a psychologist, I am often torn between academics and practicality. Linguistics. Who cares? Especially historical linguistics (an interest of mine, but not my focus). Sure, it can be fun and interesting, but so can laying back on the grass watching clouds go by; no one wants to pony up any money to pay someone to do that!

Myself, I'm what's called an applied linguist. That means that we take the theoretical and make it practical. In particular, I am interested in Second Language Acquisition (SLA). My goal is to understand languages and the way that we learn them in a way that will help us find the most efficient and enjoyable ways to learn them. I can deal with that. It's got a practical application.

Other applied linguists work on such projects as language recognition programs for computers. They're the people who have you to thank for all those automated menus that let you talk and not just punch in numbers when you call in to customer service. (For better or for worse!)

Synchronic linguists work on mapping language in terms of syntax, morphology, phonology and other structural stuff. Said linguists try to establish models of language that applied linguists often make use of. So, OK, we can keep the synchronic linguists as useful, even though their work is primarily theoretical.

Then there are historical (diachronic) linguists. History of language. Did Latin American Spanish come from the dialect of Andaluz and do we care? I've struggled with the practicality of historical linguistics, but I've found a few reasons why they are worth while. First off, if you want to read historical documents, you need to be able to read the language that they were written in. That's pretty practical. Second, through historical linguistics, we can see what kinds of changes languages are capable of going through/producing and so we can use them to do a reality check on the work of synchronic linguistic models.

Another branch of linguistics also deserves mention. This is sociolinguistics. Sociolinguistics applies linguistics to real people and real situations. It looks at questions of social interaction. For example, a sociolinguist might deal with the question of which English speakers get subtitled (often the black guy and not the white guy, even if the black guy's dialect is equally understandable). Also, sociolinguists can look at linguistic politics. What's the deal with English Only? Is it a good idea? What are its motivations? What are its potential ramifications? This brings us back to applied linguistics in SLA. How well/quickly can one reasonably expect an immigrant to learn a new language?

So, yes, linguists do stuff outside of the theoretical realm that can justify a paycheck. I'm still working on finding a practical reason for Literary Studies, though.