Best Linguistics Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings Page 4

Source: In the Land of Invented Languages: Esperanto Rock Stars, Klingon Poets, Loglan Lovers, and the Mad Dreamers Who Tried to Build A Perfect Language

“We mathematicians are used to the fact that our subject is widely misunderstood, perhaps more than any other subject (except perhaps linguistics).”

Facts Used Subjects Mathematician Misunderstood Linguistics

Author:Keith Devlin

“A new era in the physiological investigation of linguistic sounds was opened up by X-ray photography.”

Sound Photography Eras Rays Investigation Linguistics New Era Physiological

Author:Roman Jakobson

“I believe that political correctness can be a form of linguistic fascism, and it sends shivers down the spine of my generation who went to war against fascism.”

Believe War Form Political I Believe Generations Fascism Political Correctness My Generation Spine Correctness Linguistics Shiver Linguists

Author:P. D. James

“Literature that keeps employing new linguistic and formal modes of expression to draft a panorama of society as a whole while at the same time exposing it, tearing the masks from its face - for me that would be deserving of an award.”

Whole Would Be Faces Literature Expression Mask Awards Formal Deserving Exposing Linguistics Employing Panorama Deserving It

Author:Elfriede Jelinek

“Most of my formal choices are a combination of everything I learned about form - semiotics, linguistics, and the history of style experimentations tethered to literary movements (formalism, deconstruction, modernism, and postmodernism), and the basic principal of breaking every rule I ever learned from a patriarchal writing tradition that never included my body or experience, and thus has nothing to offer me in terms of representation.”

Writing Body Form Choices Term Style Movement Offers Tradition Combination Principal Representation Formal Modernism Experimentation Linguistics Postmodernism Deconstruction Semiotics

Author:Lidia Yuknavitch

“If you focus on literature through only one small element of it, like the more scientific element of linguistics, then where is the joy that brought us literature in the first place, which is to have a story?”

Ifs Firsts Stories Joy Literature Focus Elements Linguistics

Author:T.C. Boyle

“In studying language we can discover many basic properties of this cognitive structure, its organization, and also the genetic predispositions that provide the foundation for its development. So in this respect, linguistics, first of all, tries to characterize a major feature of human cognitive organization. And second, I think it may provide a suggestive model for the study of other cognitive systems. And the collection of these systems is one aspect of human nature.”

Thinking Trying Firsts Humans May Language Study Human Nature Development Majors Models Aspect Organization Foundation Structure Property Features Collections Cognitive Linguistics

Author:Noam Chomsky

“My linguistics is pretty theoretical.”

Theoretical Linguistics

Author:Noam Chomsky

“I've spent years studying words. Linguistics, language, the power of words, the power of phrases on human beings. All of that. It's part of my, almost obsessive, fascination. It turns out that there are some keys that we all need to know about how conversations impact us, because they do at a chemical level. There are certain things that if we learned this, it would totally change our interactions with others, and that's the following. There are certain words that have a feeling of, "I love you, I care for you, you're in my tribe."”

Feelings Care Language Study Love You I Care Power Of Words Obsessive Linguistics Care For You

Author:Judith E. Glaser

“I never thought of that one, that linguistics could be driving cultural things. There are some thoughts that that does happen in humans, that languages have different characteristics and that influences in some ways how different groups behave, and I suppose it might in whales.”

Different Language Influence Driving Behave Linguistics

Author:Hal Whitehead

“Older siblings get more total-immersion mentoring with their parents before younger siblings come along. As a result, they get an IQ and linguistic advantage because they are the exclusive focus of their parents' attention.”

Parent Results Attention Focus Advantage Mentor Exclusive Sibling Mentoring Linguistics My Siblings Immersion Sibling Day Younger Siblings Older Sibling

Author:Jeffrey Kluger

“There may be no more-radioactive term in the English language than what we now almost always refer to as the 'n-word' - itself a coy means of linguistic sidestepping that is a sign of how perilous it is to utter the thing in full, even in conversations about language.”

May Mean Language Term Conversation English Language Linguistics

Author:Jeffrey Kluger

“If words are not things, or maps are not the actual territory, then, obviously, the only possible link between the objective world and the linguistic world is found in structure, and structure alone.”

Ifs World Found Language Structure Objectives Maps Links Territory Linguistics Linguists

Book:Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics

Source: Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics

“I have my own vocabulary. I love linguistics. That surprises people.”

People My Own Surprise Vocabulary Linguistics Linguists

Author:Matthew McConaughey

“It was less a literary thing than a linguistic, philosophical preoccupation... discovering how far you can go with language to create immediate, elementary experience.”

Language Philosophical Discovering Preoccupation Linguistics How Far You Can Go

Author:Robert Morgan

“Logical positivists have never taken psychology into account in their epistemology, but they affirm that logical beings and mathematical beings are nothing but linguistic structures.”

Taken Psychology Accounts Structure Mathematical Logical Linguistics Epistemology

Author:Jean Piaget

“Logic and mathematics are nothing but specialised linguistic structures.”

Logic Mathematics Structure Sensual Linguistics Linguists

Author:Jean Piaget

“A word is an arbitrary label - that's the foundation of linguistics. But many people think otherwise. They believe in word magic: that uttering a spell, incantation, curse, or prayer can change the world. Don't snicker: Would you ever say, 'Nothing has gone wrong yet' without looking for wood to knock?”

People Thinking World Believe Prayer Gone Magic Foundation Woods Labels Curse Changing The World Spells Arbitrary Linguistics Snickers

Author:Steven Pinker

“Every language is a world. Without translation, we would inhabit parishes bordering on silence.”

World Language Silence Borders Translate Translations Linguistics Translators Parish

Author:George Steiner

“Structural linguistics is a bitterly divided and unhappy profession, and a large number of its practitioners spend many nights drowning their sorrows in Ouisghian Zodahs.”

Night Numbers Sorrow Profession Unhappy Divided Drowning Large Numbers Linguistics

Author:Douglas Adams

“In an instant he became aware that the tourist was about to try his own peculiar brand of linguistics, which meant that he would speak loudly and slowly in his own language.”

Trying Speak Language Brands Instant Peculiar Tourists Linguistics

Book:The Colour Of Magic: (Discworld Novel 1)

Source: The Colour Of Magic: (Discworld Novel 1)

“It’s ridiculous to talk about freedom in a society dominated by huge corporations. What kind of freedom is there inside a corporation? They’re totalitarian institutions - you take orders from above and maybe give them to people below you. There’s about as much freedom as under Stalinism.”

People Giving Kind Government Order Freedom Power Society Huge Institutions Ridiculous Corporations Totalitarianism Linguistics Stalinism Political Ideology

Book:How the World Works

Source: How the World Works

“Language shapes the way we think, and determines what we can think about.”

Thinking Way Language Communication Shapes Determine Linguistics Learners Foreign Language Language Learning Human Language Linguists Learning Language Language Acquisition Languages Communication Culture And Language Language Culture

Author:Benjamin Lee Whorf

“If we don't believe in free expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.”

“When I was a college student and I got interested in linguistics the concern among students was, this is a lot of fun, but after we have done a structural analysis of every language in the world what's left? It was assumed there were basically no puzzles.”

World Done Left Language Fun Students College Concern Analysis Puzzles Linguistics College Students

Author:Noam Chomsky

“The police can go to downtown Harlem and pick up a kid with a joint in the streets. But they can't go into the elegant apartments and get a stockbroker who's sniffing cocaine.”

“Bilingualism is for me the fundamental problem of linguistics.”

Problem Language Fundamentals Linguistics Bilingualism

Book:Selected Writings: Word and Language

Source: Selected Writings: Word and Language

“I had a linguistics professor who said that it's man's ability to use language that makes him the dominant species on the planet.That may be. But I think there's one other thing that separates us from animals. We aren't afraid of vaccuum cleaners.”

Thinking Men May Said Use Funny Language Ability Animal Planets Species Professors Dominant Cleaners Linguistics

Author:Jeff Stilson

“They arose in my mind as 'given' things, and as they came, separately, so too the links grew. An absorbing, though continually interrupted labour (especially, even apart from the necessities of life, since the mind would wing to the other pole and spread itself on the linguistics): yet always I had the sense of recording what was already 'there', somewhere: not of 'inventing'.”

Mind Given Grew Wings Spread Labour Links Inventing Interrupted Absorbing Linguistics

Author:J. R. R. Tolkien

“Linguine linguistics that left my verbal essence saucy, Send a message, leave you sleepin' next to headless horsey.”

Next Left Messages Essence Hip Hop Rap Linguistics Headless

Author:Action Bronson

“The story of English spelling is the story of thousands of people - some well-known, most totally unknown - who left a permanent linguistic fingerprint on our orthography.”

People Wells Stories Left Known Permanent Well Known Linguistics Spelling Fingerprints Linguists

Author:David Crystal

“Language is the most massive and inclusive art we know, a mountainous and anonymous work of unconscious generations.”

Knows Art Language Work Generations Unconscious Massive Linguistics Linguists Inclusiveness Culture And Language

Book:Language

Source: Language

“If we ask a vague question, such as, 'What is poetry?' we expect a vague answer, such as, 'Poetry is the music of words,' or 'Poetry is the linguistic correction of disorder.'”

Ifs Asks Answers Poetry Is Disorder Vague Corrections Linguistics What Is Poetry

Book:Set in motion: essays, interviews, and dialogues

Source: Set in motion: essays, interviews, and dialogues

“The contradiction so puzzling to the ordinary way of thinking comes from the fact that we have to use language to communicate our inner experience, which in its very nature transcends linguistics.”

Thinking Way Facts Use Language Ordinary Communicate Contradiction Way Of Thinking Linguistics Puzzling

Author:D.T. Suzuki

“It seemed to a number of philosophers of language, myself included, that we should attempt to achieve a unification of Chomsky's syntax, with the results of the researches that were going on in semantics and pragmatics. I believe that this effort has proven to be a failure. Though Chomsky did indeed revolutionize the subject of linguistics, it is not at all clear, at the end the century, what the solid results of this revolution are. As far as I can tell there is not a single rule of syntax that all, or even most, competent linguists are prepared to agree is a rule.”

“Linguistics is a good way of defining the culture of a brand. The vocabulary used by sports and lifestyle brands - running, fitness, training, motorsports - is all about functionality, whereas the vocabulary of the luxury business - handbags, ready-to-wear - is all about the product.”

Way Running Used Culture Sports Ready Products Training Lifestyle Luxury Brands Vocabulary Defining Good Way Linguistics Handbags Functionality Motorsports Fitness Training

Author:Francois-Henri Pinault

“The careful scholarship of the dedicated amateur mycophile R. Gordon Wasson reads like an exciting scientific detective story. Moreover, his willingness to pursue the quest through the wide range of linguistics, archeology, folklore, philology, ethnobotany, plant ecology, human physiology, and prehistory constitutes an object lesson to all holistic professional students of man.”

“Linguistics is our best tool for bringing about social change and SF is our best tool for testing such changes before they are implemented in the real world, therefore the conjunction of the two is desirable and should be useful.”

World Should Two Real Social Tools Real World Desirable Testing Social Change Linguistics Conjunctions

Author:Suzette Haden Elgin

“Pharoahe Monch is like an eloquent linguistics professor moonlighting as a rhyme serial killer terrorist, challenging the listeners' I.Q. while daring him or her to keep up.”

Challenges Terrorist Professors Daring Killers Listeners Rhyme Eloquent Linguistics Serials Serial Killer

Author:Kool Moe Dee

“A linguist deaf to the poetic functions of language and a literary scholar indifferent to linguistics are equally flagrant anachronisms.”

Language Function Poetic Scholar Indifferent Deaf Linguistics Linguists Anachronism

Book:Language in Literature

Source: Language in Literature

“Daniel Dennett is our best current philosopher. He is the next Bertrand Russell. Unlike traditional philosophers, Dan is a student of neuroscience, linguistics, artificial intelligence, computer science, and psychology. He's redefining and reforming the role of the philosopher.”

Next Roles Psychology Students Computer Philosopher Currents Traditional Artificial Intelligence Artificial Neuroscience Computer Science Linguistics Redefining

Author:Marvin Minsky

“General editors' preface The growth of translation studies as a separate discipline is a success story of the 1980s. The subject has developed in many parts of the world and is clearly destined to continue developing well into the twenty-first century. Translation studies brings together work in a wide variety of fields, including linguistics, literary study, history, anthropology, psychology, and economics. This series of books will reflect the breadth of work in translation studies and will enable readers to share in the exciting new developments that are taking place at the present time.”

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Linguistics Quotes