RS422 to uart interfacing
For an RS422 link you just need the components you describe - usually just a differential line driver and receiver. The data format is identical to RS232 asynchronous format just sent over a differential pair instead of a single wire and earth.

Baud rate is bits per second or bps - character rate is: baud / no of bits per character (including start, parity and stop bis) so an 8 bit character (or symbol) sent with a start bit and a stop bit - no parity will require 8 bits to transmit, so at 9600 baud we can only send 960 characters per second.