Top 35 Linguistic Quotes

I can usually find my own way out of whatever dicey literary or linguistic situations I wander into, but I have to work much harder at the science.

The integers of language are sentences, and their organs are the parts of speech. Linguistic organization, then, consists in the differentiation of the parts of speech and the integration of the sentence.

Intended to serve as an introduction to both the linguistic and also the practical study of spoken English.

If what distinguishes us from other species is speech, then poetry, which is the supreme linguistic operation, is our anthropological – indeed, genetic – goal.

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.

My interest in the linguistic differences between women and men grew from research I conducted early in my career on conversations between speakers of different ethnic and regional backgrounds.

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.

Linguistic supersizing is on the increase, and it may show the influence of advertising-speak and corporate jargon on language, in which everything needs to be hyped to get noticed. It means that some of our greatest words are losing their power.

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.’

The most appealing side-effect of Sri Lankan cricket from where I stand, shuffling words, has been linguistic.

In general, the philological movement opened up countless sources relevant to linguistic issues, treating them in quite a different spirit from traditional grammar; for instance, the study of inscriptions and their language. But not yet in the spirit of linguistics.

I don’t have any particular desire to see words making a comeback. They are of their era, after all, and that is their identity – they form part of the linguistic color of a period.

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

Death is a displaced name for a linguistic predicament.

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.

There have always been difficult situations for activists in Pakistan. In the 1960s, people fought for linguistic and ethnic rights in relation to the Bangladesh movement and the struggle of the people in the western Balochistan province.

Music is such a great communicator. It breaks down linguistic barriers, cultural barriers, it basically reaches out. That’s when rock n’ roll succeeds, and that’s what virtuosity is all about.

Linguistic philosophers continue to argue that probably music is not a language, that is in the philosophical debate. Another point of view is to say that music is a very profound language.

A linguistic system is a series of differences of sound combined with a series of differences of ideas.

Logic and mathematics are nothing but specialised linguistic structures.

Although many texters enjoy breaking linguistic rules, they also know they need to be understood.

It doesn’t take a language long to disappear once the spirit to continue with it leaves its community. In fact, the speed of the decline has been one of the main findings of recent linguistic research.

If only Queen Elizabeth II had the intellectual, political and linguistic skills of Queen Elizabeth I, many people would support giving her some of the powers of an elected president.

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.

From a linguistic point of view, you can’t really take much objection to the notion that a show is a show is a show.

Good cinema has no regional or linguistic boundaries.

Unlike our neighbours on the mainland of Europe, we have resisted creating an academy to legislate over proper English. We each have our linguistic bugbear, but few of us would want to freeze our mother tongue.

I wanted as little formal linguistic theory as I could get by with. I wanted the basic linguistic training to do a translation of the New Testament.

There’s an old little jingle: ‘The chief use of slang is to show that you’re one of the gang.’ What that means is that every social group has its own linguistic bonding mechanism. If there’s a group of lawyers, they have their own slang. If there’s a group of doctors, they have their own slang, and so on.

CIA relies on a partner’s focus, linguistic agility, and cultural depth; in return, the partner benefits from CIA’s resources, technology, and global view.

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.

Linguistic sounds, considered as external, physical phenomena have two aspects, the motor and the acoustic.

There is no such thing as too much swearing. Swearing is just a piece of linguistic mechanics. The words in-between are the clever ones.

Part of what our problem as blacks in America is that we don’t claim that. Partly, you see, because of the linguistic environment in which we live.

Why does everyone cling to the masculine imagery and pronouns even though they are a mere linguistic device that has never meant that God is male?