20th-century Linguist Quotes

J. M. Coetzee

Octavio Paz

Julio Cortázar

André Brink

Snježana Kordić

George Lakoff

Benjamin Lee Whorf

What counts now are the value-less facts, the material and the rational. All else is regarded with condescension as being of only sentimental value.

All arguments based on the unequal status of texts are questionable. In principle, all ancient readings have an equal status, without relation to the text or translation in which they are found.

The domain of ideology coincides with the domain of signs. They equate with one another. Wherever a sign is present, ideology is present, too. Everything ideological possesses semiotic value.

Valentin Voloshinov

That mainstream English is essential to our self-preservation is indisputable... but it is not necessary to abandon Spoken Soul to master Standard English, any more than it is necessary to abandon English to learn French or to deprecate jazz to appreciate classical music.

John R. Rickford

However, a rich print environment helps only when more reading is done.

Stephen Krashen

At the end of time when God judges us humans, I just hope He remembers to judge Himself as well.

The ultimate goal is a comprehensive classification of what is very likely a single language family. The implications of such a classification for the origin and history of our species would, of course, be very great.

Joseph Greenberg

When writing a poem, I feel like I'm translating. And when I'm translating, I feel like I'm writing.

It's one thing to make lemonade out of lemons, another to proclaim that
lemons are what you'd hope for in the first place.

The cry that 'fantasy is escapist' compared to the novel is only an echo of the older cry that novels are 'escapist' compared with biography, and to both cries one should make the same answer: that freedom to invent outweighs loyalty to mere happenstance, the accidents of history; and good readers should know how to filter a general applicability from a particular story.

Man does not live on bread alone; his other necessity is communication.

Charles F. Hockett

There is no right to punish. There is only the power to punish,' she wrote. 'A man is punished for his crime because the State is stronger than he; the great crime of War is not punished because beyond the individual there is mankind, and beyond mankind there is nothing at all.

We shall work not on the macrocosmic scale of the literary forms, but on the microcosmic scale of the lexical forms.

As for changes in the world, the most valuable surely is that we need no longer be an island entire unto ourselves. No young gay person is thrown in jail anymore for just the suspicion of homosexual activity.

The Macedonian language is actually an artifact produced for primarily political reasons.

It is generally believed that scientific talent reveals itself in early youth. [...] This was certainly not my case. I somehow slid into my scientific profession. My mother wished for me to become a physician, just like my father. [...] I myself wanted to be a lawyer, defender of the unjustly accused. But my career is the result of political circumstances, academic possibilities, and lucky accidents.

If you behave like a doormat, expect to be stepped on and don't complain about it.

Suzette Haden Elgin

This period is characterized by a diversity of textual transmissions undreamed of two decades ago.

Moshe Goshen-Gottstein

In contemporary society, advertising is everywhere. We cannot walk down the street, shop, watch television, go through our mail, log on to the Internet, read a newspaper or take a train without encountering it. Whether we are alone, with our friends or family, or in a crowd, advertising is always with us, if only on the label of something we are using.

Let's face it. Very few people want to talk to someone who is showing outward signs of fear or depression.

Jeanne Martinet

As a scientist, objectivity is one of my most deeply held values. If we could just try harder, I once thought, surely we could each see the world as others see it and learn to respect one another's views more readily. But I learned from the Pirahas, our expectations, our culture, and our experiences can render even perceptions of the environment nearly incommensurable cross-culturally.

If only there were a lexicographer of Liang Shih-ch'iu's ability who also had the perspicuity to arrange his dictionary by sound rather than radical! … No wonder most of us are so sour and gray by the time we reach fifty! The amount of time consumed and the spirit expended in this sort of meaningless, not to mention destructive, type of activity is beyond calculation.

Science and technology contribute to the fast-expanding vocabularies of all living civilized tongues at a faster rate than all other fields of human endeavor put together.

I have resisted the term sociolinguistics for many years, since it implies that there can be a successful linguistic theory or practice which is not social.

Big dictionaries are nothing but storerooms with infrequently visited and dusty corners.

Richard W. Bailey