Also, quite clearly the linguistics background was introduced as core to the character of Hoshi Sato in ENT, intended to be the prototype of Uhura in a role that had been erased (replaced by the ship's computer) in TNG.
That position relative to the character of Uhura has been validated in SNW, where the linguistics background was made part of Uhura's character from the beginning, and connected to Hoshi Sato in "Those Old Scientists."
So for all intents and purposes, they didn't stop with salting it into Nichelle Nichols' character in the movies; at every turn, Trek writers have taken the opportunity to weave it in more deeply not only to Uhura, but also to the role she occupies.
So when the 2009 Star Trek movie was made, of course it became core to Zoe Saldana's version—but we immediately see Pike boot his current comms officer out of the seat because he's shown up as a poor linguist.
It makes sense that Gene would not have made that essential to the role of comms officer on what was essentially a US Navy vessel, because from his experience a comms officer wasn't a practicing linguist; they were a practicing cryptographer.
That remains the key role that the computer has usurped throughout Star Trek: the cryptographic aspect of military communications is no longer a human task (unless something makes it necessary to the plot of a story).
And it does make sense that linguistics replaces cryptography as a basic aspect of the job—but that, too, is a layer of complexity not original to Gene's universe. The universal translator had always already made that problem go away, unless it was necessary to the plot of a story that the perfect, invisible solution to that problem fail.
So of course that only arises in Phase II, because Gene had otherwise handwaved it out of TOS, presumably so not every story had to climb that hurdle. We see that ENT decided it was worth making the series deal with climbing that linguistic hurdle as a key aspect of humans making their way into galactic society, but that's far more cerebral than would have sold when TOS was being pitched.
And when they decided the Enterprise series would deal with that very cerebral plot aspect, who did they give it to? The Uhura character, just in the person of Hoshi Sato. In the wake of all of that development and nuance given to Uhura's actual character in Nichelle Nichols' hands (or fumbled embarrassingly before it got to her hands, as in STVI), they made that intellectual heavy-lifting job go to another woman of color, played by Linda Park, sitting in the prequel-prototype of Uhura's chair. Someone the ship couldn't leave dock without. Someone who would also act as the captain's diplomatic coach for dealing with every culture they would come into contact with. Someone also designed to be a key viewpoint character for the audience, whose reactions were always a noticeable emotional key to what was going on.
And it's because of the development of Hoshi Sato as such an essential character to the narrative that all of this development also then folds back into the character of Uhura, first in ST2009 as an alternative equilateral triangle point for Kirk and Spock in what becomes a core rhombus with Bones, and then in SNW as the absolute most visible cadet trainee and viewpoint character. That MCE never was originally intended to go to Uhura, but starting with Nichelle Nichols it got claimed for her, over and over and over, piece by piece, until it was so integral to her character that it had to be retconned in where originally absent. Vastly more than a switchboard operator, vastly more than a linguist, vastly more than a token representation of social progress.
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