Semiotics

"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."

"Language is a human construct. The more vibrant and fast-moving society is, the more the language changes. That can be a wonderful thing. In fact, one of my favorite books to read in off-hours is H. L. Mencken’s The American Language, written by this genius when he was otherwise censored for his views in wartime. It’s a marvelous chronicling of the evolution of American usage, published in 1919, but oddly pertinent even today, applicable to the dwindling number of people who can still form coherent sentences. When it comes to vocabulary, there are two schools of thought broadly speaking: prescriptivist and descriptivist. The prescriptivist view is that words have embedded meanings that you can trace from other languages and should be used as intended. The descriptivist approach sees language as more a living experience, a tool of utility to make communication possible, in which case anything goes."

"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."

"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."

"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..."

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

"There is no mode of action, no form of emotion, that we do not share with the lower animals. It is only by language that we rise above them, or above each other — by language, which is the parent, and not the child, of thought."

"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."

"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."

"Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of our language."

"The limits of my language mean the limits of my world."

"For remember that in general we don't use language according to strict rules — it hasn't been taught us by means of strict rules, either. p. 25"

"An entire mythology is stored within our language."

"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."

"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."

"Well languag'd Danyel."

"Pedantry consists in the use of words unsuitable to the time, place, and company."

"And who in time knows whither we may vent The treasure of our tongue? To what strange shores This gain of our best glory shall be sent, T' enrich unknowing nations with our stores? What worlds in th' yet unformed Occident May come refin'd with th' accents that are ours?"

"Who climbs the grammar-tree, distinctly knows Where noun, and verb, and participle grows."

"Language is fossil poetry."

"“A language, like a species, when extinct, never… reappears.”"

"And don't confound the language of the nation With long-tailed words in osity and ation."

"Language is the only instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas."

"L'accent du pays où l'on est né demeure dans l'esprit et dans le cœur comme dans le langage."

"Writ in the climate of heaven, in the language spoken by angels."

"La grammaire, qui sait régenter jusqu'aux rois, Et les fait, la main haute, obéir à ses lois."

"Une louange en grec est d'une merveilleuse efficace à la tête d'un livre."

"L'accent est l'âme du discours, il lui donne le sentiment et la vérité."

"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"

"Syllables govern the world."

"Ego sum rex Romanus, et supra grammaticam."

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

""We worked with a guy called Dr. Stuart Smith from UCLA and he’s an Egyptologist He put all this stuff on tape for us and it’s kind of the closest we can come to what we think the actual language sounded like. It’s like ancient Latin. When we speak Latin now we think it’s what it sounded like, but we’re not really sure. The problem with a lot of this Egyptian stuff is words like ‘look out’ become like 10 lines. Steve would go, ‘No, no, no. Lose the first four words. Say that word and then say the last word.’ So basically, I’d end up making the stuff up."

"Language is the expression of ideas, and if the people of one country cannot preserve an identity of ideas they cannot retain an identity of language."

"The English language is my bitch. Or I don't speak it very well. Whatever."

"From purest wells of English undefiled None deeper drank than he, the New World's Child, Who in the language of their farm field spoke The wit and wisdom of New England folk."

"Oft on the dappled turf at ease I sit, and play with similes, Loose type of things through all degrees."

"And the veil Spun from the cobweb fashion of the times, To hide the feeling heart?"

"Men turn their faces to hell, and hope to get to heaven; why don't they walk into the horsepond, and hope to be dry?"

"If you think that you can sin, and then by cries avert the consequences of sin, you insult God's character."

"When you see a man with a great deal of religion displayed in his shop window, you may depend upon it he keeps a very small stock of it within."

"Hypocrites do the devil's drudgery in Christ's livery."

"Woe unto thee if after all thy profession thou shouldst be found under the power of ignorance, lost in formality, drowned in earthly-mindedness, envenomed with malice, exalted in an opinion of thine own righteousness, leavened with hypocrisy and carnal ends in God's service."

"Not he who scorns the Saviour's yoke Should wear his cross upon the heart."

"Some hypocrites and seeming mortified men, that held down their heads, were like the little images that they place in the very bowing of the vaults of churches, that look as if they held up the church, but are but puppets."

"Thus 'tis with all; their chief and constant care Is to seem everything but what they are."

"A man I knew who lived upon a smile, And well it fed him; he look'd plump and fair, While rankest venom foam'd through every vein."

"The hypocrite may serve, among other things, as a deformed ambassador of the truth. By so obviously misrepresenting the truth, he enables us to trace its smothered outlines."

"I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy."