Ian Hacking Quotes

It would be just as pointless to oppose the international use of English today as it would have been to oppose the worldwide use of French in the 18th century.

Requiring this kneeling down of all languages before French is sheer linguistic imperialism.

I am under the spell of language, which has ruled me since I was 10.

English is taking over the world. I just wrote a piece about it. And it's not by design. The United States dominates because it's the biggest market.

Man acts as though he were the shaper and master of language, while in fact language remains the master of man.

There was a time when liberals were linguistically dominant in America.

The issue of American world cultural dominance is moot. All the international debates on the issue seem to be held in English.

I hate all that nonsense about not touching the colonialists' language. All that about it being corrupting and belonging to the master and making you Caliban. That thinking just denies you an outlet. You deny everything that is great from a language, whether it is Conrad or Shakespeare.

The canker has so eaten into the society that in many cases the only meaning of education is a knowledge of English.

If the French were really intelligent, they'd speak English.

Of course, English is a very powerful language, a colonizer's language and a gift to a writer. English has destroyed and sucked up the languages of other cultures - its cruelty is its vitality.

The mother tongue is propaganda.

This belief in the necessity of English training has enslaved us. It has unfitted us for true national service.

Language is very powerful. Language does not just describe reality. Language creates the reality it describes.

I have a funny relationship to language. When I came to California when I was three I spoke Urdu fluently and I didn't speak a word of English. Within a few months I lost all my Urdu and spoke only English and then I learned Urdu all over again when I was nine. Urdu is my first language but it's not as good as my English and it's sort of become my third language. English is my best language but was the second language I learned.

No instance exists of a person's writing two language perfectly. That will always appear to be his native language which was most familiar to him in his youth.

Words, like angels, are powers which have invisible power over us.

Men suppose their reason has command over their words; still it happens that words in return exercise authority on reason

Words people say not only have a shelf life but have the ability to shape life.

The power of language, it seems to me, is the only kind of power a writer is entitled to.

I think it was something I inherited from my mother, who learned to do it. You know, I, like a baby duckling, was merely mimicking the survival traits that my mother possessed. And I came to learn very quickly that language was a powerful, powerful tool.

The teachers tried everything, even pleading, but Tomas was in the habit of addressing them only in Latin, a language he spoke with papal fluency and in which he did not stammer. Sooner or later they all resigned in despair, fearing he might be possessed: he might be spouting demonic instructions in Aramaic at them, for all they knew.

However virile the English language may be, it can never become the language of the masses of India.

Colonialism is a terrible bane for a people upon whom it is imposed, but a blessing for a language. English's drive to exploit the new and the alien, its zeal in robbing words from other languages, its incapacity to feel qualms over the matter, its museum-size overabundance of vocabulary, it shoulder-shrug approach to spelling, its don't-worry-be-happy concern for grammar-the result was a language whose colour and wealth Henry loved.

In recognizing that words have power to define and to compel, the semanticists are actually testifying to the philosophic quality of language which is the source of their vexation. In an attempt to get rid of that quality, they are looking for some neutral means which will be a nonconductor of the current called "emotion" and its concomitant of evaluation.