Discourse

"Evolution teaches us the original purpose of language was to ritualize men's threats and curses, his spells to compel the gods; communication came later."

"We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native language. The categories and types that we isolate from the world of phenomena we do not find there because they stare every observer in the face; on the contrary, the world is presented in a kaleidoscope flux of impressions which has to be organized by our minds—and this means largely by the linguistic systems of our minds. We cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe significances as we do, largely because we are parties to an agreement to organize it in this way—an agreement that holds throughout our speech community and is codified in the patterns of our language [...] all observers are not led by the same physical evidence to the same picture of the universe, unless their linguistic backgrounds are similar, or can in some way be calibrated."

"Jede Zeit sagt, daß derzeit die Sprache so gefährdet und von Zersetzung bedroht sei wie nie zuvor. In unserer Zeit aber ist die Sprache tatsächlich so gefährdet und von Zersetzung bedroht wie nie zuvor."

"Verbing weirds language."

"We live in a time of acute bitterness and acrimony, where people’s first (and second and third) impulse is to brutalize, insult, embarrass and demean those who hold different views. The purpose of language, as they see it, isn’t to clarify or enlighten or reason together. It is to inflict the maximum pain possible on other human beings."

"That well known distinction between knowing that and knowing how fits the learning of a language....That is, we must distinguish between knowing how to speak or listen to words and knowing that about them. Learning a language is primarily the former."

"Language itself inevitably introduced an element of permanence into the world. For, although speech itself is transitory, the conventionalized sound symbols of language transcended time. ...To obtain a greater degree of permanence the time symbols of oral speech had to be converted into the space symbols of written speech. ...The crucial stage in the evolution of writing occurred when ideographs became phonograms..."

"A gentleman is often seen, but very seldom heard to laugh."

"Speech is the best show a man puts on."

"But to restrict thinking to the patterns merely of English […] is to lose a power of thought which, once lost, can never be regained. It is the 'plainest' English which contains the greatest number of unconscious assumptions about nature. […] We handle even our plain English with much greater effect if we direct it from the vantage point of a multilingual awareness."

"Don Chaucer, well of English undefyled On Fame's eternall beadroll worthie to be fyled."

"One can learn to speak a new language, but [learning] to embrace the weight of its meaning from its people, within Pacific contexts and mannerism, can never be replaced."

"Mutual understanding would be immensely facilitated by the use of one universal tongue. But which shall it be, is the great question. At present it looks as if the English might be adopted as such, though it must be admitted that it is not the most suitable. Each language, of course, excels in some feature.... A practical answer to that momentous question must perforce be found in times to come, for it is manifest that by adopting one common language the onward march of man would be prodigiously quickened. I do not believe that an artificial concoction, like Volapuk, will ever find universal acceptance, however time-saving it might be. That would be contrary to human nature. Languages have grown into our hearts."

"Oh Lord God, deliver us from this prison, almost as it were, of paper, pen and ink, and of a crooked, broken, scattered and imperfect language."

"The story of man’s infatuation with his language is an unending one. In a remote village of Africa, a wise Dogon man used to say “to be naked is to be speechless.” Power, as unveiled by numerous contemporary writings, has always inscribed itself in language. Speaking, writing, and discoursing are not mere acts of communication; they are above all acts of compulsion."

"Fie, fie upon her! There's language in her eye, her cheek, her lip, Nay, her foot speaks; her wanton spirits look out At every joint and motive of her body."

"There was speech in their dumbness, language in their very gesture."

"Knowledge belongs to the one who succeeds in mastering a language."

"Language is its own music."

"Dick Grayson: Oh, heck! What's the use of learning French anyway?"

"He has strangled His language in his tears."

"A clever Toronto lawyer was deep into a technical argument before the Supreme Court. His position was dependent upon a close reading of the legal text and turned on the letter of the law. Suddenly the chief justice, Beverley McLachlin, leaned forward and asked the counsel if his argument also worked in French. After all, the law is the law in both languages and a loophole in one tends to evaporate in the other. Only an argument of substance stands up. The lawyer had no idea what to reply."

"Thou whoreson Zed! thou unnecessary letter!"

"Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society. It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially without the use of language and that language is merely an incidental means of solving specific problems of communication or reflection. The fact of the matter is that the "real world" is to a large extent unconsciously built upon the language habits of the group. No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached … We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation."

"You taught me language; and my profit on't Is, I know how to curse. The red plague rid you For learning me your language!"

"Language also reveals its power through an insignificant slip of the pen, for no matter how one tries to subject it to control and reduce it to “pure” instrumentality, it always succeeds in giving an inkling of its irreducible governing status."

"It is easy to show that language and culture are not intrinsically associated. Totally unrelated languages share in one culture; closely related languages—even a single language—belong to distinct culture spheres. There are many excellent examples in Aboriginal America. The Athabaskan languages form as clearly unified, as structurally specialized, a group as any that I know of. The speakers of these languages belong to four distinct culture areas... The cultural adaptability of the Athabaskan-speaking peoples is in the strangest contrast to the inaccessibility to foreign influences of the languages themselves."

"…language is this medium that we hand back and forth between us in all human relationships all the time, it doesn't really have a privileged place. It's this coinage in which we keep trying to get a hold of each other or make ourselves clear."

"Experience is always larger than language."

"I believe in the necessity for a poetic language untethered from the compromised language of state and media."

"The politician manufactures a language - a vocabulary and a rhetoric - which, if you accept it as wholly adequate, leads inevitably to the answers he wants and to the actions he wants. But the prior question is whether the language is adequate to the facts. And as the poet is concerned with making language do new work and finding out the implications of language , his answer is always : no ."

"“Chance of source language influencing the target language and that of the translator intervening onto the style of original writer are major challenges in literary translation.”"

"It seems to me that the notion of 'a language' should not be regarded as scientifically reconstructable at all. We can say in very broad terms that a human language is a characteristic way of structuring expressions shared by a speech community; but that is extremely vague, and has to remain so. The vagueness is ineliminable, and unproblematic. Human languages are no more scientifically definable than human cultures, ethnic groups, or cities. The most we can say about what it means to say of a person that they speak Japanese is that the person knows, at least to some approximation, how to structure linguistic expressions in the Japanese way (with object before verb, and postpositions, and so on). But in scientific terms there is no such object as 'Japanese'."

"While bilingual is understood as a valuable asset or goal for middle-class and upper-class students, for working-class and poor students it is framed as a disability that must be overcome"

"Ebbinghaus: Language is a system of conventional signs that can be voluntarily produced at any time."

"Language was our secret weapon, and as soon we got language we became a really dangerous species."

"Literature has something to do with language. There's probably a natural grammar at the tip of your tongue. You may not believe it, but if you say what's on your mind in the language that comes to you from your parents and your street and friends, you'll probably say something beautiful. Still, if you weren't a tough, recalcitrant kid, that language may have been destroyed by the tongues of school-teachers who were ashamed of interesting homes, inflection, and language and left them all for correct usage."

"No jobs, no people. No people, no . No Gaeltacht, no language."

"“Strength of creative writing lies in the skill of handling words and articulating artistic expression of feelings.”"

"“Language is texture of images and music. We speak in images and rhythm, by taking help of words.”"

"…basically, language is an inadequate and limited instrument. No matter what language a writer speaks, she always hopes that it will be universal, that it will transcend the particular ethnic barriers that language creates."

"Anyone who invents a language,” he said, “finds that it requires a suitable habitation and a history in which it can develop. A real language is never invented, of course. It is a natural thing. It is wrong to call the language you grow up speaking your native language. It is not. It is your first learnt language. It is a by-product of the total make-up of the animal."

"‘We cannot tell as yet what the language is. It may be the production of nature, a work of human art, or a divine gift….If it be a production of nature, it is her last and crowning production, which she reserved for man alone. If it be a work of human art, it would seem to lift the human artist almost to the level of a divine creator. If it be the gift of God, it is God’s greatest gift; for through it God spake to man and man speaks to God in worship, prayer and meditation’."

"For those of us who write, it is necessary to scrutinize not only the truth of what we speak, but the truth of that language by which we speak it. For others, it is to share and spread also those words that are meaningful to us."

"How else can I say it? I don't speak no other languages."

"Each of us is here now because in one way or another we share a commitment to language and to the power of language, and to the reclaiming of that language which has been made to work against us. In the transformation of silence into language and action, it is vitally necessary for each one of us to establish or examine her function in that transformation and to recognize her role as vital within that transformation."

"Men learned to speak in order to understand one another. Cultural languages have lost the ability to help men to advance beyond the most rudimentary level and attain understanding. It seems that the time has come to learn to be silent once again."

"Words alike make the destiny of empires and of individuals. Ambition, love, hate, interest, vanity, have words for their engines, and need none more powerful. Language is a fifth element — the one by which all the others are swayed."

"… and French and Italian were, it must be owned, somewhat unnecessary to one who considered her own language an unnecessary fatigue."

"Here it is fitting to remark that the study of the spontaneous growth of languages is of the utmost importance to those who would logically remodel them."