Language Dynamics Quotes

A language does not become fixed. The human intellect is always on the march, or, if you prefer, in movement, and languages with it.

Language evolves and moves on. It is an organic thing. It is not stuck in an ivory tower, hung with expensive works of art.

We need words to name and designate things. But we have only a static language with which to express ourselves.

The one thing - apart from assumptions about German - that I have to challenge frequently is people assuming that lexicographers are fierce protectors of the language when in fact our job is not to put a lid on it.

Words bounce. Words, if you let them, will do what they want to do and what they have to do.

One cannot be too careful with words, they change their minds just as people do.

Language changes and moves in a different direction evolving all the time. Where a lot of people see deterioration, I see expressive development

There's no such thing as an unabridged dictionary.

The notion that anything is gained by fixing a language in a groove is cherished only by pedants.

Words move, turning over like tumbling clowns; like certain books and like fleas, they possess activity. All men equally have the right to say, 'This word shall bear this meaning,' and see if they can get it across. It is a sporting game, which all can play, only all cannot win.

One must not consider a language as a product dead, and formed but once; it is an animate being, and ever creative. Human thought elaborates itself with the progress of intelligence; and of this thought language is a manifestation. An idiom cannot therefore remain stationary; it walks, it develops, it grows up, it fortifies itself, it becomes old, and it reaches decrepitude.

Language does not stand still. Surprisingly, despite this knowledge, most speakers are fearful of change.

I wonder if, as a society, we will ever be able to call someone a jive tofurkey.

People aren't used to thinking of cultural forms spreading out across the full range of formal interactions - or what is called the 'text' in literary terms.

You have to seduce the reader, manipulate their mind and heart, listen to the music of language. I sometimes think of prose as music, in terms of its rhythms and dynamics, the way you compress and expand the attention of a reader over a sentence, the way the tempo pushes you towards an image or sensation. We want an intense experience, so that we can forget ourselves when we enter the world of the book. When you are reading, the physical object of the book should disappear from your hands.

Words have a life of their own. There is no telling what they will do. Within a matter of days, they can even turn turtle and mean the opposite.

Sociology isthescience of talk, and there is onlyone law in sociology. Bad talk drives out good.

All words have life cycles.

Much of the magic of language, of course, lies in its fluidity.

Almost any word can be drafted to serve as a verb, even words we think of as eternal and unchanging, stuck in their more traditional roles.

It is useful to the historian, among others, to be able to see the commonest forms of different phenomena, whether phonetic, morphological or other, and how language lives, carries on and changes over time.

In a poem the excitement has to maintain itself. I am governed by the pull of the sentence as the pull of a fabric is governed by gravity.

Language itself changes slowly, but the Internet has speeded up the process of those changes so you notice them more quickly.

At any one time language is a kaleidoscope of styles, genres and dialects.

In general, I agree with Jacob Grimm and feel that we ought to permit changes and uncontrolled growth in language. Even though that also allows potentially threatening new words to develop, language needs the chance to constantly renew itself.