The only thing in life is language. Richard Burton, cited Melvyn Bragg
Mr Rumpole, you are speaking a language which is totally foreign to me. Rumpole of the Bailey s1e1: Rumpole and the Younger Generation, judge, Thames TV 1975
This is a distressing case in all conscience. Do you have to add to the disagreeable nature of the proceedings with the sound of your tormenting the English language? Rumpole of the Bailey s3e5: Rumpole and the Sporting Life, judge to prosecuting brief
The vanity of translation; it were as wise to cast a violet into the crucible that you might discover the formal principle of its colour and odour, as seek to transfuse from one language to another the creations of a poet. The plant must spring again from its seed, or it will bear no flower. Percy Bysshe Shelley, A Defence of Poetry
Our language is replete with synaesthetic metaphors. Professor V S Ramachandran
That so many writers have been prepared to accept a kind of martyrdom is the best tribute that flesh can pay to the living spirit of man as expressed in his literature. One cannot doubt that the martyrdom will continue to be gladly embraced. To some of us, the wresting of beauty out of language is the only thing in the world that matters. Anthony Burgess, English Literature: A Survey for Students, 1958
Language is courage: the ability to conceive a thought, to speak it, and by doing so to make it true. Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses
Russian girl, 4, can speak, think clearly in 7 languages. China Daily report 25th October 2016
She’s having to get to grips with around 30,000 words. Babies: Their Wonderful World III: Becoming Independent, BBC 2018
Babies prefer to listen to parantese … Parantese exaggerates the rhythm of words. ibid.
How can you ban language, words? How’re words offensive? And why should I have to tolerate your interpretation? I’m the one using the word. Ask me how I’m using it, don’t tell me. And if you don’t like the way I’m using it, so what? It’s my right. It’s my freedom of expression. Without that, we’re nothing but slaves. My language, now fuck off! John Lydon aka Johnny Rotten, re court case against Richard Branson and record shop for publicly displaying record cover with the words, Never Mind the Bollocks [blanked], Here’s the Sex Pistols
According to Jonathon Green [Slang], the incomparable scholar of the language which fell off the back of a lorry, ‘Slang is the poetry of the gutter, is the poetry of the disenfranchised, the poetry of the have-nots.’ Jonathan Meades on Jargon: More Than You Ever Wanted to Know ***** BBC 2019
Gore Vidal described irony as ‘the weapon of the impotent.’ ibid.
The real satisfaction is to be had in the creation of texts, of slang which will be deemed offensive and of satire. Satire need not be funny but it must be mordant, vicious, aggressive and hurtful. ibid.
Slang is the expression of what we think rather than what we are enjoined to think. ibid.
Slang is the most sour poetry, it is not wishy-well, it’s demotic, it’s the spoken and very occasionally written invention of the tap-room, the bar-room, the workplace, the barracks, the private place. ibid.
Slang is about showing off, about increasing one’s idiolect … It’s an expression of verbal dexterity … The pleasure of slang is in the making. ibid.
His [Trump] proudly proclaimed racism and misogyny, his cosmic ignorance, his chilling nationalism, his blatant nepotism, his tax paying, his bullying, sheer nastiness, his complete lack of generosity, his success in turning America into a pariah state, he has launched on an undeserving world a leatherette-faced consigliere called Kelly Ann. ibid.
‘Anyone who puts himself forward to be elected to a position of political power is almost bound to be socially and emotionally insecure, or criminally motivated, or mad.’ ibid. Auberon Waugh
Don’t they [politicians] realise how tired, how clapped out their paltry jargon is? It’s the language of people who can’t think for themselves, and arrogantly believe that the rest of the populace shares their infirmity. We don’t. These people are programmed morons, their threadbare formulae are more than just pockmarks, they’re seething buboes signalling an absolute contempt for the populace whom they regard as gullible patsies to be patronisingly talked down to. They signal too a contempt for the language of the country they are meant to be governing. They signal their own poverty of thought. Are they brainwashed? They are certainly tongue-washed. ibid.
Jargon is the language of the trained liar, the professionally mendacious, the dishonest trainee who learns from his masters … That very clarity is of course the problem. ibid.
These accents are worn with such pride, such misplaced pride, in their differences and their ticks and they whimsical peculiarities that they have become foreign to one another. ibid.
Max Atkinson spends his life studying video tapes of top politicians talking. After analysing hundreds of speeches, Dr Atkinson has discovered the hidden rules of the world-games played by politicians to make us applaud. World in Action: Clap Trap, ITV 1984