2,489 Quotes About Language

I never knew what language they'd lapse into when fucked - Urdu or Telugu or a mix of both (only the techies came in English).

Striving to convey to this beloved audience of one what was going on around me during those five years, I learned the power of language to map a life, to overcome a distance, to focus attention on what matters most.

We're living in a teetering tower of babble. A shaky reality of words. A DNA soup for disaster. The natural world destroyed, we're left with this cluttered world of language.

Whether the vessel is a legal document or a rap song, language is often chosen ot exclude. To use a scholarly phrase, "discourse communities" are often gated,so it's the good writer's job to offer readers a set of keys.

The problem Creationists identify is with the word 'theory', not with the case for evolution

We should not write so that it is possible for the reader to understand us, but so that it is impossible for him to misunderstand us.

Words themselves are neutral. It's the charge we add to them that matters

But the male lexicographers had somehow neglected to coin a word for the dislike of men. They were almost entirely men themselves, she thought, and had been unable to imagine a market for such a word.

One must not be shy where language is concerned.