1、Here are some quotations about the question “what is language”: The Armory of the Human Mind“Language is the armory of the human mind, and at once contains the trophies of its past and the weapons of its future conquests.“(Samuel Taylor Coleridge) Records of Other Peoples Experience“Every individual
2、 is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition into which he has been born-the beneficiary inasmuch as language gives access to the accumulated records of other peoples experience, the victim in so far as it confirms him in the belief that reduced awareness is the only awaren
3、ess and as it bedevils his sense of reality, so that he is all too apt to take his concepts for data, his words for actual things.“(Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception, 1954) An Art“Language is an anonymous, collective and unconscious art; the result of the creativity of thousands of generations.
4、“(Edward Sapir) An Instinctive Tendency“As Horne Tooke, one of the founders of the noble science of philology, observes, language is an art, like brewing or baking; but writing would have been a better simile. It certainly is not a true instinct, for every language has to be learnt. It differs, howe
5、ver, widely from all ordinary arts, for man has an instinctive tendency to speak, as we see in the babble of our young children; whilst no child has an instinctive tendency to brew, bake, or write. Moreover, no philologist now supposes that any language has been deliberately invented; it has been sl
6、owly and unconsciously developed by many steps.“(Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, 1871) The Instrument of Science“I am not yet so lost in lexicography as to forget that words are the daughters of earth and that things are the sons of heaven. Language is only the instrument of science, and words a
7、re but the signs of ideas: I wish, however, that the instrument might be less apt to decay, and that signs might be permanent, like the things which they denote.“(Samuel Johnson, Preface, A Dictionary of the English Language, 1755) Laws“In language, the ignorant have prescribed laws to the learned.“
8、(Richard Duppa, Maxims, 1830) A Process of Free Creation“Language is a process of free creation; its laws and principles are fixed, but the manner in which the principles of generation are used is free and infinitely varied. Even the interpretation and use of words involves a process of free creatio
9、n.“(Noam Chomsky) A Finite System“Any language is necessarily a finite system applied with different degrees of creativity to an infinite variety of situations, and most of the words and phrases we use are prefabricated in the sense that we dont coin new ones every time we speak.“(David Lodge, “Wher
10、e Its At,“ The State of the Language, 1980) A Stage Beyond Ape-Mentality“Language is incomplete and fragmentary, and merely registers a stage in the average advance beyond ape-mentality. But all men enjoy flashes of insight beyond meanings already stabilized in etymology and grammar.“(Alfred North W
11、hitehead, Adventures of Ideas, 1933) A Cracked Kettle“Language is a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we long to move the stars to pity.“(Gustave Flaubert) A Barrier to Progress“Language is the biggest barrier to human progress because language is an
12、 encyclopedia of ignorance. Old perceptions are frozen into language and force us to look at the world in an old fashioned way.“(Edward de Bono) Intrinsically Approximate“Language is intrinsically approximate, since words mean different things to different people, and there is no material retaining
13、ground for the imagery that words conjure in one brain or another.“(John Updike, The New Yorker, December 15, 1997) A Sheet of Paper“Language can also be compared with a sheet of paper: thought is the front and the sound the back; one cannot cut the front without cutting the back at the same time; l
14、ikewise in language, one can neither divide sound from thought nor thought from sound.“(Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, 1916) An Object Between Sound and Thought“The language is an intermediate object between sound and thought: it consists in uniting both while simultaneously d
15、ecomposing them.“(Roland Barthes, Elements of Semiology, 1964) A Labyrinth“Language is a labyrinth of paths. You approach from one side and know your way about; you approach the same place from another side and no longer know your way about.“In the actual use of expressions we make detours, we go by
16、 side-roads. We see the straight highway before us, but of course we cannot use it, because it is permanently closed.“Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.“(Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical In
17、vestigations, 1953) The Mother of Thought“Language is the mother of thought, not its handmaiden.“(Karl Kraus, Dicta and Contradicta) The Shaper of Thought“Language shapes the way we think, and determines what we can think about.“(Benjamin Lee Whorf, Language, Thought, and Reality, 1964) Source: http:/
