Those words . . . national and portrait. They were both to do with identity: the identity of a culture (place, language and history), the identity of an individual human being as an object for mimetic representation.
Where the bodily presence is weak and the speech contemptible, surely there cannot be error in making written language the medium of better utterance than faltering lips can achieve?
You can take and nail two sticks together like they've never been nailed together before and some fool will buy it.
Because we were not in our country, we could not use our own languages, and so when we spoke our voices came out bruised.
Attempting to contain the infinite within finite symbolism of language may result in scholarship, but it will not produce devotion. (110)
I still have a feeling that I haven't written the best that I can write. I think all poets must feel this: that there is constantly something new to be discovered in the language. It's like a thrilling encounter, and you can find things.
Your purpose is to make your audience see what you saw, hear what you heard, feel what you felt. Relevant detail, couched in concrete, colorful language, is the best way to recreate the incident as it happened and to picture it for the audience.
Likewise, there is no evidence that texting teaches people to spell badly: rather, research shows that those kids who text frequently are more likely to be the most literate and the best spellers, because you have to know how to manipulate language.
Attempting to build a language wall around Quebec is precisely the wrong policy to follow. It will keep out of Quebec exactly what we need to attract by way of talent and capital; it will drive our best - francophones as well as allophones and anglop...
All translations are made up" opined Vikram, "Languages are different for a reason. You can't move ideas between them without losing something
It is not objective proof of God's existence that we want but, whether we use religious language for it or not, the experience of God's presence.
The business of stories is not enchantment. The business of stories is not escape. The business of stories is waking up.
Some version of 'Deal or No Deal' airs in 120 countries. And they play it exactly the same way, with models and briefcases. It crosses language and culture and gender, because it's the simplest game in the world, and everyone wants to press their luc...
I keep thinking, we teach children to use language to solve their disputes. We teach them not to hit and fight and bite. Then look what adults do!
The payment made by a manufacturer to a patentee for the privilege of using the patent process, is usually termed, in commercial language, a rent; and under the same head must be ranked all extraordinary qualities of body and mind.
Language, that most human invention, can enable what, in principle, should not be possible. It can allow all of us, even the congenitally blind, to see with another person’s eyes.
The language of chemistry simply does not mesh with that of biology. Chemistry is about substances and how they react, whereas biology appeals to concepts such as information and organisation. Informational narratives permeate biology.
The Australian way of affirmative action is setting goals and recognising discrimination and lack of opportunity and deciding to take action and setting some goals and targets. I guess I prefer that language to talking about quotas.
There is always that age-old thing about England and America being divided by a common language. You think that because we speak English and you speak English that you're bound to understand and like everything that we do. And of course you don't.
I'm interested in painting the most beautifully compelling pictures and images and metaphors and stories and explanations possible that will put Jesus in language for a world that desperately needs to hear it.
To become a mother is to learn a whole language - to relearn it, perhaps, as it was the tongue to which we were born - and hence gain entrance to a forgotten world of comprehension.
