J.R.R. Tolkien’s academic specialty in language and literature was philology.
Philology studies the history of languages through written records, including how words, sounds, and texts change over time. Tolkien trained in classics and later specialized in English language and literature, becoming a leading scholar of Old and Middle English.
His professional work included teaching and research on texts such as Beowulf. He also studied languages including Welsh, Finnish, Gothic, and Old Norse, among many others. These interests influenced the sound systems, vocabulary, and histories of his invented languages.
Philology is sometimes mistaken for general linguistics or literary criticism. The fields overlap, but Tolkien’s work was especially concerned with historical language and textual traditions. His fiction grew from this scholarship, yet Middle-earth was not simply a coded version of one real language or nation.