Quotes About Language

Education jargon is the language of pedants; it identifies those who have so little confidence in themselves and their work that they seek to create a veil of words to hide them.

Research has also shown that when performing language tasks, the autistic subject relies on the visual and spatial areas of the brain more heavily than the neurotypical subject does, perhaps to compensate for a lack of the kind of semantic knowledge that comes with social interaction

malapropism

It is offensive that so many people feel that it is okay to publicly refer to transsexuals as being "pre-op" or "post-op" when it would so clearly be degrading and demeaning to regularly describe all boys and men as being either "circumcised" or "uncircumcised.

A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words. Where can I find someone who's forgotten words so I can have a word with him?8

You know what a word means when you know how to use it, not what its definition is. That is why we can understand and use all sorts of words that we struggle to define clearly if we are put on the spot and asked to do so.

Rhetoric is simply the use of language to persuade, and it can be used to persuade us of falsehoods as well as truths.

How does one write about a president who uttered words appealing to white nationalists in 2020 and incited a violent insurrection against the U.S. Congress, but do so in the analytical language that one might use to describe tax policy?

All of these concrete metaphors increase enormously our powers of perception of the world about us and our understanding of it, and literally create new objects. Indeed, language is an organ of perception, not simply a means of communication.

The lexicon of language, then, is a finite set of terms that by metaphor is able to stretch out over an infinite set of circumstances, even to creating new circumstances thereby.

And as you read, you are not conscious of the letters or even of the words or even of the syntax or the sentences and punctuation, but only of their meaning. As you listen to an address, phonemes disappear into words and words into sentences and sentences disappear into what they are trying to say, into meaning. To be conscious of the elements of speech is to destroy the intention of the speech.

language is an organ of perception, not simply a means of communication

Subjective conscious mind is an analog of what is called the real world. It is built up with a vocabulary or lexical field whose terms are all metaphors or analogs of behavior in the physical world…concrete metaphors increase enormously our powers of perception of the world about us and our understanding of it, and literally create new objects.

Set all your trust in God and fear not the language of the world; for the more despite, shame, and reproof that ye have in the world, the more is your merit in the sight of God. Patience is necessary unto you, for in that shall ye keep your soul.

I say I write to you, but, truth be told, I prefer the American idiom: I write you. I'll write you friends say, as if, in writing, someone could be caused to appear, as if writing were a spell, some form of conjuration. So, I write you to bring you here, bring you back.

I am told that the first comprehensible word I uttered as a child was 'home.'

By bringing our daughters to France, we were actually sending them to a boot camp where children learn not just to speak, but to speak a lot, and well.

There must be a thousand words for stranger in the explored galaxy. Let one of them be sister ---

I wished I could erase the message, suck the word "sorry" from the En glish language, and hack it to pieces with a rusty ax.

I know a flute player is technically called a "flautist," but something about it sounds a little sketchy, as does "pianist," so I will refrain.

Concering the power of the written word

There aren't enough words in the English language to express how badly I stink at sports.

I can't help what people think sounds male or female.

If every member of the human race evinced a fondness for literature and even a moderate level of dexterity with the written word, I would be a happier, if not more well-adjusted, man.