And besides, what about these linguistic conventions themselves? Are they perhaps products of knowledge, that is, of the sense of truth? Are designations congruent with things? I
I wanted to highlight "Is language the adequate expression of all realities?"
Without language, what exists?
If deception is only deception because of a negative result, is deception without a negative result still deception?
The various languages placed side by side show that with words it is never a question of truth, never a question of adequate expression; otherwise, there would not be so many languages
We are only continually approximating out thoughts, not fully communicating
There are two universal, general gifts be-stowed by nature upon man, Reason and Speech; dialectic is the theory of the former, grammar and rhetoric of the latte
Language is probably the greatest tool human kind has. Reasoning exists in many animals, but extensive communication networks and language is ours! Also, poor use of the word "Universal" here. If it was a universal gift, it would be for everyone and not just man.
as infants cannot learn to speak except by learning words and phrases from those who do speak
Read some Chompsky. Language is an internal process. The Language Instinct from Pinker is good, too.
the rules which are laid down in the art of oratory could not have been observed, and noted, and reduced to system, if they had not first had their birth in the genius of orators
Early study of a language needed.
Language is based on reason, antiquity, authority, custom. It is analogy, and sometimes etymology, that affords the chief support to reason. A certain majesty, and, if I may so express myself, religion, graces the antique.
beautiful
Foreign words, like men, and like many of our institutions, have come to us, I might almost say, from all nations.
Language is formed on complex interactions and has many histories, especially English. It cannot be classified as our language and other language because these so often overlap
uneducated more effective than the educated when addressing popular audiences
"in oratory the very cardinal sin is to depart from the language of everyday life, and the usage approved by the sense of the community." - Cicero, De Oratore
The foundation of good style is correctness of language, which falls under five heads. (1) First, the proper use of connecting words, and the arrangement of them in the natural sequence which some of them require. For instance, the connective "men" (e.g. ego men) requires the correlative "de" (e.g. o de). The answering word must be brought in before the first has been forgotten, and not be widely separated from it; nor, except in the few cases where this is appropriate, is another connective to be introduced before the one required. Consider the sentence, "But as soon as he told me (for Cleon had come begging and praying), took them along and set out." In this sentence many connecting words are inserted in front of the one required to complete the sense; and if there is a long interval before "set out," the result is obscurity. One merit, then, of good style lies in the right use of connecting words. (2) The second lies in calling things by their own special names and not by vague general ones. (3) The third is to avoid ambiguities; unless, indeed, you definitely desire to be ambiguous, as those do who have nothing to say but are pretending to mean something.
Use of language in good style.
People do not feel towards strangers as they do towards their own countrymen, and the same thing is true of their feeling for language. It is therefore well to give to everyday speech an unfamiliar air: people like what strikes them, and are struck by what is out of the way.
Style. Use language people recognize and understand.
The power of discourse stands in the same relation to the soul's organization as the pharmacopoeia does to the physiology of bodies.
This is an important sentiment, one that we might see repeating in other readings. In what ways is language a drug? In what ways does language intoxicate or heal?