Quotes About Language

Kling's point is that no matter what language we speak, we should use slow thinking, not fast thinking. Citing Daniel Kahneman's bestselling book Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kling argues that we go wrong in political discourse when we hear a fact in isolation and jump to conclusions without considering its context. He encourages us to consider political problems slowly and logically instead—much like Elder did in our 2016 interview.

Freud, who spoke German, used the term zwangsneurose (obsessional neurosis). The word zwang was translated as 'obsession' in London, but 'compulsion' in New York. Faced with confusion, scientists introduced the hybrid term 'obsessive-compulsive', a label subsequently given to millions of people, as a compromise.

The letters make words and words make us.

I'm actin' pro se. Do you even know what that means?" "Yeah, it's Latin for 'dumbass.

Well, that's my problem, isn't it? J'ai perdu la beauté de ma culture. Je suis américaine maintentant.

She had spent considerable time writing the letter. The younger generation, with all of its tweets and Facebook and cryptic texts and emails where no actual language or grammar were involved, would never have understood taking the time

Most of the time, the symptomatic meaning of an utterance is just too obvious to be noticed.

any utterance of more than trivial length has no one translation; all utterances have innumerably many acceptable translations.

The apes are, after all, behind the bars of their cages, and we are not. Eager for the experiments to begin, they are also impatient for their food to be served, and they seem impatient for little else. After undergoing years of punishing trials at the hands of determined clinicians, a few have been taught the rudiments of various primitive symbol systems. Having been given the gift of language, they have nothing to say. When two simian prodigies meet, they fling their placards at each other.

The wrong words make you listen in this criminal world. - Fantastic Voyage

One of the most famous paradoxes ever articulated is often known by the title 'the liar's paradox'. At its simplest you can express it just by saying: 'I am lying'. The liar's paradox is a complicated business, discombobulating to think about because after all, if I'm lying, then my statement 'I am lying' must itself be a lie, unless I was actually telling the truth, in which case I would have been telling a lie.

As simple an act as reading or writing a sentence must be surrounded by perceptory nap and weave . . . an itch, a stray memory from childhood, the distant sound of a barking dog, or something left over from the lunch that is found caught between the teeth.

Concepts that had eluded him because they could not be shaped with images and feelings alone, but needed the rich subtlety of abstract language to shape and anchor them with a webbery of symbols.

Language could be used as an instrument of control, a way of establishing hierarchies that suggest one set of people is better or more special than another. Through language, one automatically identifies one's place within a social and cultural hierarchy and we all carry with us illogical attitudes about the bearers of particular language, based on our own cultural background and continued exposure to local political ideals.

I'm truly amazed at you, Garion, Polgara said. I didn't think you had the faintest idea of how to speak a civilized language. Thank you, he said, I think.

I wouldn't do that, Silk advised. Thinking about it isn't going to help, and it's only going to make you nervous. Nervouser, Garion corrected. I'm already nervous. Is there such a word as 'nervouser'? Silk asked Belgarath curiously. There is now, Belgarath replied. Garion just invented it. I wish I could invent a word, Silk said admiringly to Garion.

If all you're going to do is talk in riddles, why bother with it at all? Why go to all the trouble of saying things that nobody's able to understand?" "Because it's necessary to say it. The word determines the event. The word puts limits on the event and shapes it. Without the word, the event is merely a random happening. That's the whole purpose of what you call prophecy—to separate the significant from the random.

JavaScript is not a functional programming language like Lisp or Haskell, but the fact that JavaScript can manipulate functions as objects means that we can use functional programming techniques in JavaScript.

What goes on inside is just too fast and huge and all interconnected for words to do more than barely sketch the outlines of at most one tiny little part of it at any given instant.

I'd tell you all you want and more, if the sounds I made could be what you hear

Please learn the pragmatics of expressing fear: sometimes words that seem to express really invoke. This can be tricky.

Words and a book and a belief that the world is words...

There are very few innocent sentences in writing.

I simply must say, as crass as we are conditioned by a troubled society to regard the word, I am a firm believer in the comparative merits of the word 'fuck.