Quotes About Language

Se debe a Gregory Bateson y a su famoso grupo de investigadores el primer proyecto de estudio sobre la comunicación y sus efectos no solo semánticos y sintácticos, sino sobre todo pragmáticos.

antilogías y paradojas, y el recurso a una lógica no lineal y no ordinaria, se estudian y experimentan de manera sistemática como eficaces instrumentos de comunicación.

hipnótica, «las sugestiones indirectas funcionan mejor que las directas».

Nothing is so indecent that it cannot be said to another person if the proper words are used to convey it.

A linguagem acha-se toda ensopada de mentiras.

Actualmente, hablamos de lenguajes en plural, por tanto, de lenguajes cuyo significante no es la palabra: por ejemplo, el lenguaje del cine, de las artes figurativas, de las emociones, etcétera. Pero éstas son acepciones metafóricas. Pues el lenguaje esencial que de verdad caracteriza e instituye al hombre como animal simbólico es «lenguaje-palabra», el lenguaje de nuestra habla.

Y éste es el proceso que se atrofia cuando el homo sapiens es suplantado por el homo videns . En este último, el lenguaje conceptual (abstracto) es sustituido por el lenguaje perceptivo (concreto) que es infinitamente más pobre: más pobre no sólo en cuanto a palabras (al número de palabras), sino sobre todo en cuanto a la riqueza de significado, es decir, de capacidad connotativa.

Plain boiled food, plain boiled thinking. Even his name is plain boiled: John. Maybe because I grew up with black bean sauce and hoisin sauce and garlic sauce, I always feel something is missing when my son-in-law talk.

O kitsch é a única forma de linguagem possível se quisermos comunicar com as massas, porque simplifica tudo e não apresenta nenhuma nuance.

Il mistero di come i concetti e le idee prendano corpo in noi attraverso i segni che ci scambiamo lo affascinava sempre di più negli ultimi tempi. Il linguaggio. Avrebbe trattato prima o poi il problema delle sue forme. Avrebbe trattato anche quello.

Love your country. Your country is the land where your parents sleep, where is spoken that language in which the chosen of your heart, blushing, whispered the first word of love; it is the home that God has given you that by striving to perfect yourselves therein you may prepare to ascend to him.

John MacKechnie's Gaelic Without Groans

Don't kill me—you fucking cunt. Hot tip. If you're trying to get someone to not kill you, avoid calling him a fucking cunt.

There's an exclamation mark on this keyboard which shares tab-space with the number one. Shift+1=! It's insufficient. Radically inadequate as the denotation of my surprise. Even in bold. Even in underlined bold italic. I need something else, some punctuation mark not yet invented.

Plus there was the standard French insult of ignoring your French and answering in English.

I passed a large dark room where a wall-mounted flat-screen with sound muted showed an overweight rapper performing rap hand gestures, which are supposed to project masculine cool but in fact look like a pointlessly violent version of deaf sign language.

This, of course, is the crux. It doesn't really matter what the language is, only whether there's a transcendent moral grammar underpinning it. No one really cares what hell's called or who runs it. They just don't want to go there.

I suppose the word "unbearable" is a lie by definition. Unless you kill yourself immediately after using it.

I suppose the word "unbearable" is a lie by definition. Unless you kill yourself immediately after using it.

I've never understood the logic that says a work doesn't need to be judged on the quality of its writing or characters simply because its genre. On the other hand, I've also never understood the logic of excusing a work from the need to tell a story worth telling about people worth knowing simply because the author writes pretty language or has some insights to offer.

Political correctness doesn't change us, it shuts us up.

Music is the language of the heart, and conservatives always screw it up.

Whoever thought a tiny candy bar should be called fun size was a moron.

Look, calling somebody in a wheelchair handicapable doesn`t all of a sudden give them the power to climb stairs or the ability to grab Ho-Hos off the top shelf.