Use Of Language Quotes - Page 2

• I regard writing not as an investigation of character but as an exercise in the use of language, and with this I am obsessed.

  Evelyn Waugh

  Writing, Character, Exercise

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• If Woody Guthrie set the bar for American songwriters, Bob Dylan jumped right over it. No one I know will ever come close to possessing the beauty of melody and the use of language that Dylan shares with us, with ease.

  John Mellencamp

  Bars, Use, Ease

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• There is a narrow class of uses of language where you intend to communicate. Communication refers to an effort to get people to understand what one means. And that, certainly, is one use of language and a social use of it. But I don't think it is the only social use of language. Nor are social uses the only uses of language.

  Noam Chomsky

  Communication, Mean, Thinking

  Source: chomsky.info

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• I think fiction goes to poetry for the intensity of its use of language.

  Edward Hirsch

  Thinking, Fiction, Use

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com.

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• [H]ow do I pity those who (assuming the name of friends) surround themselves with maxims importing the wisdom of doubt and suspicion, 'til they impose on themselves that very hard task of laboring through life without ever knowing a human creature to whom they can make the proper use of language and freely speak the dictates of their hearts!

  Sarah Fielding

  Friendship, Heart, Names

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• The indexing problem changes with each new book undertaken. To meet the needs of different classes of seekers and to suit various types of books, rules entirely satisfactory in one case must be varied in the next and perhaps ignored or even reversed for a third... Indexing is a highly complex intellectual process involving the use of language in a specific and somewhat artificial way, and that it is also to a considerable extent a matter of intuition, the workings of which cannot be reduced to fixed rules. It is 'knowing what but not knowing how'.

  Hans H Wellisch

  Book, Class, Knowing

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• The use of language around drugs is really important. So we find that it's increasingly difficult in our society to find the word "drug" not connected to the word "abuse." The notion of a responsible use of drugs is written out in the language of our culture.

  Graham Hancock

  Drug, Abuse, Important

  "Interview with Russell Brand, Daniel Pinchbeck, & Graham Hancock". www.marandapleasantmedia.com. 2012.

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• I think the use of language is a very important means by which this species, because of its biological nature, creates a kind of social space, to place itself in interactions with other people. It doesn't have much to do with communication in a narrow sense; that is, it doesn't involve transmission of information. There is much information transmitted but it is not the content of what is said that is transmitted.

  Noam Chomsky

  Communication, Mean, Thinking

  Source: chomsky.info

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• There is undoubtedly much to learn about the social uses of language, for communication or for other purposes. But at present there is not much in the way of a theory of sociolinguistics, of social uses of languages, as far as I am aware.

  Noam Chomsky

  Communication, Purpose, Use

  Source: chomsky.info

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• I think we need to sort of broaden our definition of poetry, which maybe it's a good thing that they just gave this Nobel Prize to [Bob] Dylan because blurring the lines of song lyrics and also hip-hop for me is like some of the greatest uses - most innovative uses of language in my lifetime.

  Jim Jarmusch

  Song, Thinking, Hip Hop

  Source: www.npr.org

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• A really good stand-up comic is a poet; it's about the use of language. It can be really poetic. And I like politically conscious comedy.

  Sherman Alexie

  Use, Comedy, Language

  Interview with Joelle Fraser, www.english.illinois.edu. 2000.

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• Rhetoric, which is the use of language to inform or persuade, is very important in shaping public opinion. We are very easily fooled by language and how it is used by others.

  Ray Comfort

  Important, Public Opinion, Use

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• But once an original book has been written - and no more than one or two appear in a century - men of letters imitate it, in other words, they copy it so that hundreds of thousands of books are published on exactly the same theme, with slightly different titles and modified phraseology. This should be able to be achieved by apes, who are essentially imitators, provided, of course, that they are able to make use of language.

  Pierre Boulle

  Book, Writing, Men

  Pierre Boulle (1963). “Planet of the Apes”

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• You don't have to be Michelangelo to teach basic art, just as you don't have to be Shakespeare to be able to teach the correct use of language.

  Charles de Lint

  Art, Teaching, Use

  Charles De Lint (2000). “Triskell Tales: Twenty-two Years of Chapbooks”, Subterranean

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• Evolution is a theory in a special philosophical sense of science, but in terms of ordinary laymen's use of language, it's a fact, .. Evolution is a fact in the same sense that it's a fact that the Earth is round and not flat, [that] the Earth goes round the Sun. Both those are also theories, but they're theories that have never been disproved and never will be disproved.

  Richard Dawkins

  Philosophical, Special, Sun

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• Philosophy may in no way interfere with the actual use of language; it can in the end only describe it.

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  Philosophy, Use, May

  Ludwig Wittgenstein (1958). “Philosophical investigations”

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• I would say that the writers I like and trust have at the base of their prose something called the English sentence. An awful lot of modern writing seems to me to be a depressed use of language. Once, I called it "vow-of-poverty prose." No, give me the king in his countinghouse. Give me Updike.

  Martin Amis

  Kings, Writing, Giving

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• Whereas, according to the declaration of that true man of the world Talleyrand, the use of language is to conceal the thoughts; this is to declare in the present instance, when I say I am not able to bear much talking, it means really, and without any mistake, or equivocation, or oblique meaning, or implication, or subterfuge, or omission, that I am not able; being at present rather weak in the head, and able to work no more.

  Michael Faraday

  Mistake, Mean, Men

  "Michael Faraday: His Life and Work". Book by Silvanus Phillips Thompson, 1898.

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• Television is a new, hard test of our wisdom. If we succeed in mastering the new medium it will enrich us. But it can also put our mind to sleep. We must not forget that in the past the inability to transport immediate experience and to convey it to others made the use of language necessary and thus compelled the human mind to develop concepts. For in order to describe things one must draw the general from the specific; one must select, compare, think. When communication can be achieved by pointing with the finger, however, the mouth grows silent, the writing hand stops, and the mind shrinks.

  Rudolf Arnheim

  Communication, Sleep, Writing

  Rudolf Arnheim (1957). “Film as Art”, p.195, Univ of California Press

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• When you are challenging the young, they can come back at you with language of tremendous power and they are no respecters of sacred cows, you know, the young. There's nothing politically correct about the average young Australian when it comes to use of language.

  Tony Abbott

  Average, Challenges, Use

  "Live from the Melbourne Writers Festival". "Q&A" with Tony Jones, www.abc.net.au. August 27, 2009.

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• Some feminist critics debate whether we take our meaning and sense of self from language and in that process become phallocentric ourselves, or if there is a use of language that is, or can be, feminine. Some, like myself, think that language is itself neither male nor female; it is creatively expansive enough to be of use to those who have the wit and art to wrest from it their own significance. Even the dread patriarchs have not found a way to 'own' language any more than they have found a way to 'own' earth (though many seem to believe that both are possible).

  Paula Gunn Allen

  Art, Believe, Thinking

  Paula Gunn Allen (1998). “Off the Reservation: Reflections on Boundary-busting Border-crossing Loose Canons”, Boston, Mass. : Beacon Press

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• Consider the way you speak and your use of language; it's a reflection of your warrior spirit.

  Frederick Lenz

  Buddhism, Warrior, Reflection

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• The primary function of the creative use of language - in our age - is to try to constantly restore words to their meanings, to keep the living tissue of responsibility alive.

  Jorie Graham

  Responsibility, Creative, Age

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• Tobias Buckell combines old world with new in his novel CRYSTAL RAIN. While the rich cultures, drawn in part from Caribbean history and lore, echo a familiar landscape, he brings it out of the Earth milieu and into a bold new universe where technology and tradition collide. I enjoyed his colorful characters and musical use of language; his voice is fresh and entirely readable.

  Karin Lowachee

  Rain, Character, Technology

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