Linguistics major here.
- NO. Not if that's your only reason for majoring in it.
Sorry, this really needs to be emphasized: Linguistics is not about learning languages. It’s a common misconception from what I’ve seen.
Linguistics is the study of language. Some core subfields are: Phonetics (study of speech sounds), phonology (how speech sounds go together in a given language), syntax (phrase structure in a given language), semantics (meaning), and morphology (word structure). All the linguistics programs I’ve looked at require studying at least one other language, but the point of that requirement isn’t solely so you know more languages. The point is to give you a basis for comparing different languages and to help with understanding how languages can vary.
Long story short, if none of the subfields I mentioned sound interesting to you, don’t major in linguistics. There are quite a few interdisciplinary fields involving linguistics, but the linguistics portions will build off of those core subfields.
If you’re not sure, consider some examples from my classes:
Syntax: Given some phrases in a language (my instructor liked to use Native American languages), what can we conclude about the word order for this language?
Phonetics: One of our assignments was to take sound clips from an unknown language and examine the acoustic properties of the vowels to determine what vowels the language exhibited. We also had to record ourselves saying certain vowels, and used the properties of the vowels to estimate the size of our vocal tract.
Phonology: Our final paper involved analyzing data from a certain language (we got to pick from 4, I wound up with a Canadian indigenous language) and writing about our findings for why certain sounds occurred in the specific places they did, and how these different changes interacted with each other.
You’ll get a fairly similar basis for work in any linguistics class: You analyze some aspect of some language that you’re given. Exactly what’s being analyzed depends on the class. Note: Unless you spoke the language in question before doing a given assignment, you certainly won’t come out knowing how to speak the language. What you will come out with is a basic knowledge (or perhaps more in-depth, depending) of how some system in the language works.
If none of that sounds appealing, don’t major in linguistics. If it sounds interesting, take a class if possible and see. I’m not trying to discourage you; just trying to give you a realistic idea of what you’d be doing so you know what you’re getting yourself into either way.
Alright, after that really long answer:
- A linguist analyzes certain aspects of languages, though what they study and what languages these are will depend. As for what else you can do with the major: I know some people going into speech pathology. Me, I'm actually double majoring in computer science, so I fall into the computer science-related field you mentioned. I hope to eventually be working with language processing software in some fashion. Beyond those, it's pretty much like any other college degree that doesn't lead to a particular career.
- Do you mean transfer as in transfer out of the business school at your college/university, or do you mean transferring out of your college/university into another one that offers linguistics? In either case it depends on a lot of factors (you, the school's policy for switching, how difficult it would be to switch back if it doesn't go well, etc)...though I would think long and hard about completely transferring out if you mean the second one. Personally I would be hesitant to do that, but I don't know your full situation.
- I'd try contacting linguistics professors if possible. Failing that, I could see about showing you some examples of some of my past assignments to give you an idea.
Let me know if you have any other questions.