Quotes About Language

The speech of flowers excels the flowers of speech.

Good words are worth much, and cost little.

What is meaningful are not the words, the mere sound sequences spoken or letter sequences on a page, but the conceptual content that the words evoke. Meanings are thus in people's minds, not in the words on the page.

When you think you just lack words, what you really lack are ideas. Ideas come in the form of frames. When the frames are there, the words come readily.

The most important claim we have made so far is that metaphor is not just a matter of language, that is, of mere words. We shall argue that, on the contrary, human thought processes are largely metaphorical.

There is no Chomskyan person, for whom language is pure syntax, pure form insulated from and independent of all meaning, context, perception, emotion, memory, attention, action, and the dynamic nature of communication. Moreover, human language is not a totally genetic innovation. Rather, central aspects of language arise evolutionarily from sensory, motor, and other neural systems that are present in lower animals.

Morally based framing is everybody's job. Especially reporters'.

Progressives are suffering from massive hypocognition.

What we are concerned to provide throughout this book is in- stead a prerequisite to any such discussion, namely, a linguistic and rhetorical analysis of the role of metaphor in the way we understand a poem.

even when you negate a frame, you activate the frame.

This is how reason really works: through framing, metaphors, emotion, narratives, and imagery.

it's not enough just to say "equality" or "responsibility" in a speech, because conservatives and progressives each have their own understanding of what these values mean. You have to talk about your understanding of each of these words.

Truth must be framed effectively to be seen at all.

It is as though the ability to comprehend experience through metaphor were a sense, like seeing or touching or hearing, with metaphors providing the only ways to perceive and experience much of the world.

In cognitive science there is a name for this phenomenon. It's called hypocognition—the lack of the ideas you need, the lack of a relatively simple fixed frame that can be evoked by a word or two.

Since language is used for communicating thought, our view of language must also reflect our new understanding of the nature of thought. Language is at once a surface phenomenon and a source of power. It is a means of expressing, communicating, accessing, and even shaping thought. Words are defined relative to frames and conceptual metaphors.

you should say what you believe using your language, not theirs.

Because language activates frames, new language is required for new frames. Thinking differently requires speaking differently.

Progressives need to learn to communicate using frames that they really believe, frames that express what their moral views really are.

a basic principle of framing: When you are arguing against the other side, do not use their language. Their language picks out a frame—and it won't be the frame you want.

Orwellian language points to weakness—Orwellian weakness. When you hear Orwellian language, note where it is, because it is a guide to where they are vulnerable. They do not use it everywhere. It is very important to notice this and use their weakness to your advantage.

Can linguistic framing change the kind of person someone is? The answer seems to be yes, though possibly not in extreme cases.

But the facts have to be framed in appropriately moral terms so that they can be taken seriously.

The honest strategy is to use only your language and avoid using the other side's language. That will maximally activate your moral system in the moderates on the other side.