Quotes About Language

For once desire is articulated in words it does not sit still, but displaces, drifting metonymically from one thing to the next. Desire is a product of language and cannot be satisfied with an object.

Insofar as interpretation hits the real, it does not so much hit the truth as create it. For truth exists only within language (it is a property of statements), and thus there is no truth of that which cannot yet be said. Truth is not so much "found" or "uncovered" by interpretation, as created by it.

The very foundation of interhuman discourse is misunderstanding. -Lacan, Seminar III, 184

Don't speak negatively about yourself, even as a joke. Your body doesn't know the difference. Words are energy and they cast spells, that's why it's called spelling. Change the way you speak about yourself, and you can change your life.

life will sit on the tips of our tongues

How do evil, death and deception find power over the Motilone people?' I asked. "Through the ears,' Bobby answered, because language is so important to the Motilones. It is the essence of life. If evil language comes through the ears, it means death.

Say it clearly and you make it beautiful no matter what.

He said: "My mother washed out my mouth with soap because of all the bad words I used, and these had been pretty bad, I admit. What she did not know was that by washing out all the bad words, she also washed out all the good ones." In therapy all these bad words were freed, and

But in vain did he apostrophize the insect in this new language, born of sudden inspiration, as a cockroach's understanding is not equal to such a tirade: the insect continued on its journey to a corner of the room, with movements sanctified by an ageless ritual of the cockroach world.

mostly unsuccessful attempts to teach grade-school children English using transformational grammar were made during the 1960s and early 1970s. Today it is taught mostly in colleges and graduate schools. Outside linguistics, transformational grammar is used mostly in computer-language-processing applications. It has an alien look and feel to traditionalists, but it can convey interesting insights into how the language works

All it takes is a few words to make a strong impression, good or bad.

Not until 1761 did any grammarian settle on the eight that became the canonical parts of speech in English. He was the same man who discovered oxygen: Joseph Priestley (1733–1804). In his Rudiments of English Grammar, he listed these: • noun • adjective • pronoun • verb • adverb • preposition • conjunction • interjection15

documents—a luxury that earlier lexicographers never enjoyed.

though it's dreadfully ugly to the ear and why if you think hard about it, "Keep your personal belongings in visual contact at all times" is actually likely to be understood by a smaller percentage of people than, "Please keep an eye on your stuff at all times."   Nevertheless, there are imperatives behind using the language that way. And some of it is to be antihuman.

Avidum genus auricularum.

Even in modern Chinese, the word for "revolution" (as in "Cultural Revolution") is gémìng , which is literally "stripping of the mandate.

You got a French guy here byeeeeeeeeeeeee

Slaves are created with words, and so it is with words that we create, and set ourselves free.

We need a president who's fluent in at least one language.

A la mierda! ¡El que quiera leer a Rimbaud que aprenda francés!

I'm not trying to stump anybody... it's the beauty of the language that I'm interested in.

Never argue with a pedant over nomenclature. It wastes your time and annoys the pedant.

A very great part of the mischiefs that vex the world arises from words.

In general the languages of most unpolished people have a great force and energy of expression; and this is but natural. Uncultivated people are but ordinary observers of things, and not critical in distinguishing them; but, for that reason, they admire more, and are more affected with what they see, and therefore express themselves in a warmer and more passionate manner.