« All Language Quotes · Roman Jakobson's Page
Language Quotes by Roman Jakobson
- Bilingualism is for me the fundamental problem of linguistics.
- In poetic language, in which the sign as such takes on an autonomous value, this sound symbolism becomes an actual factor and creates a sort…
- Speech sounds cannot be understood, delimited, classified and explained except in the light of the tasks which they perform in language.
- A linguist deaf to the poetic functions of language and a literary scholar indifferent to linguistics are equally flagrant anachronisms.
- Languages differ essentially in what they must convey and not in what they may convey.
- Semantics, or the study of meaning, remained undeveloped, while phonetics made rapid progress and even came to occupy the central place in the scientific study…
More Language Quotes
- Only the mob and the elite can be attracted by the momentum of totalitarianism itself. The masses have to be won by… — Hannah Arendt
- High thoughts must have high language. — Aristophanes
- In making a speech one must study three points: first, the means of producing persuasion; second, the language; third the proper arrangement… — Aristotle
- But I liked Yeats! That wild Irishman. I really loved his love of language, his flow. His chaotic ideas seemed to me… — Chinua Achebe
- War is what happens when language fails. — Margaret Atwood
- As soon as you have a language that has a past tense and a future tense you're going to say, 'Where did… — Margaret Atwood
- A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language. — Wystan Hugh Auden
- A poem records emotions and moods that lie beyond normal language, that can only be patched together and hinted at metaphorically. — Diane Ackerman
- The finest command of language is often shown by saying nothing. — Roger Babson
- A special kind of beauty exists which is born in language, of language, and for language. — Gaston Bachelard
- In any area of the U.N. we... have to agree on certain language that can represent the same spirit, but that can… — Michelle Bachelet
- An inability to stay quiet is one of the conspicuous failings of mankind. — Walter Bagehot