Quotes About Language

If we know how metaphors work on a conceptual level, we can control their effects. We can avoid using metaphors that are confusing or distracting, and we can design metaphors that do exactly what we want. When we encounter metaphoric language, we can analyse what makes it effective or not. We can avoid being manipulated by subconscious metaphors, and we can accept the benefits of a metaphor while rejecting any aspects we find unhelpful or inaccurate.

In general, the specific words in metaphoric language are less important than the concepts that the metaphors are comparing. Critics often pay attention to metaphoric words instead of concepts, simply because words are easier to identify. It's straightforward to decide that a metaphor includes the word like and therefore is a simile. It's harder to pinpoint what's wrong with lightning that pirouettes or what's interesting about a window that resembles an eye.

all humans are given the same set of primary-metaphor building blocks, but different language and cultural groups put the blocks together in different ways. Some individuals even force the blocks together in ways that don't fit – which is the major reason we get mixed metaphors.

The 'death' of a metaphor is the loss of a connection between a metaphor and a specific word, not the loss of the conceptual metaphor itself. 'Dead' metaphors are words and phrases that were previously metaphoric, not conceptual metaphors that have disappeared. Conceptual metaphors generally 'outlive' the specific words and expressions that involve them.

Mixed metaphors with two source domains that don't make sense together, […] are the structures that most deserve the name 'mixed metaphors'.

Whether metaphors are strung together like separate beads on a string, or kneaded together into a compound, it's important that we can use more than one of them.

The fact that metaphors can sleep and wake is both bad news and good news for speakers and writers who want to avoid mixed metaphors. The bad news is that when a metaphoric word or phrase is sleeping for us, we probably won't notice if we use the word or phrase in ways that are inconsistent with its source-domain meaning.

It ain't what you say: it's how you say it.

if I could develop one new skill that would make a big difference in how most people communicate, it would be the skill of making a request.

Näytä minulle kuvia, sanoja en enää ymmärrä.

Min tunga hade alltid varit ett smidigt och pålitligt verktyg, men nu vägrade den att göra tjänst mer. Alldeles som jag nyss hade hade lyssnat för första gången i mitt liv, visste jag, att om jag nu vill tala, måste det vara på ett nytt sätt, som jag ännu inte var mogen för. De lager av mig själv, som nu skulle komma till tals, hade väl aldrig förr format några ord (s. 138).

key linguistic concepts and theories related to Arabic in a coherent way,

Pass the raspberry jam, please." "It's called jelly in the States." Zander handed over the tiny jar of compote.

By the time the child can draw more that scribble, by the age of four or five years, an already well-formed body of conceptual knowledge formulated in language dominates his memory and controls his graphic work. Drawings are graphic accounts of essentially verbal processes. As an essentially verbal education gains control, the child abandons his graphic efforts and relies almost entirely on words. Language has first spoilt drawing and then swallowed it up completely.

But that is really the story of Dike. It was told of her{276} that she had already withdrawn into the mountains when mankind ceased to heed dike—which in our language means not only just retribution, but also justice generally. When still worse things thereupon followed, Dike forsook the earth, and can be seen in the sky as the constellation Virgo.

Genuinely skillful use of obscenities is uniformly absent on the Internet.

When I don't make any progress, it is because I have bumped into the wall of language. Then I draw back with a bloody head. And would like to go on.

Language is the mother of thought, not its handmaiden.

A writer is someone who can make a riddle out of an answer.

My language is the common prostitute that I turn into a virgin.

Heinrich Heine so loosened the corsets of the German language that today every little salesman can fondle her breasts.

I have to do this, as long as it is at all possible; for if those who are obliged to look after commas had always made sure they were in the right place, then Shanghai would not be burning.

It is better not to express what one means than to express what one does not mean.