#linguistic

Time changes all things; there is no reason why language should escape this universal law ↗

— de Saussure

#language #linguistics #time #change

Grammar is politics by other means. ↗

— Donna J. Haraway

#gender #grammar #linguistics #politics #nature

Irony is about contradictions that do not resolve into larger wholes, even dialectically, about the tension of holding incompatible things together because both or all are necessary and true. Irony is about humour an serious play. It is also a rhetorical strategy and a political method, one I would like to see more honoured within socialist-feminism. ↗

— Donna J. Haraway

#feminism #irony #linguistics #ontology #politcs

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.' ↗

— A. R. Ammons

#ask #correction #disorder #expect #linguistic

The ambiguities of language, both in terms of vocabulary and syntax, are fascinating: how important connotation is, what is lost and what is gained in the linguistic transition. ↗

— Marilyn Hacker

#both #connotation #fascinating #gained #how

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

— Edward Sapir

#art

No important national language, at least in the Occidental world, has complete regularity of grammatical structure, nor is there a single logical category which is adequately and consistently handled in terms of linguistic symbolism. ↗

— Edward Sapir

#category #complete #consistently #grammatical #handled

It is one of the aims of linguistics to define itself, to recognise what belongs within its domain. In those cases where it relies upon psychology, it will do so indirectly, remaining independent. ↗

— Ferdinand de Saussure

#belongs #cases #define #domain #independent

Long human words (the longer the better) were easy, unmistakable, and rarely changed their meanings . . . but short words were slippery, unpredictable, changing their meanings without any pattern. ↗

— Robert A. Heinlein

#change

All communication involves faith; indeed, some linguisticians hold that the potential obstacles to acts of verbal understanding are so many and diverse that it is a minor miracle that they take place at all. ↗

— Terry Eagleton

#faith #linguistics #communication