American - Writer | -
The only way that residual racist feelings could affect legislation, in my opinion, is through a lack of priorities, from not doing things.
John McWhorter
OpinionPrioritiesDoingFeelings
Loving your language means a command of its vocabulary beyond the level of the everyday.
CommunicationLanguageLovingBeyond
Rap and spoken word have reawakened the country to poetry in itself. Texting and Twitter encourage creative uses of casual language, in ways I have celebrated widely. But we've fallen behind on savoring the formal layer of our language.
CreativePoetryLanguageCountryRap
The contribution of West African languages to Ebonics is absolutely infinitesimal. What it actually is is a very interesting hybrid of regional dialects of Great Britain that slaves in America were exposed to because they often worked alongside the indentured servants who spoke those dialects that we often learn about in school.
GreatSchoolLearnInterestingWest
People banging away on their smartphones are fluently using a code separate from the one they use in actual writing, but a code it is, to which linguists are currently devoting articles.
PeopleWritingAwayCodeArticles
People have been warning us that language was going to the dogs ever since Latin started turning into French. Yet the dogs in question never seem to emerge yelping on the horizon.
PeopleLanguageHorizonNeverDogs
Most languages spoken by a few thousand people are so complicated they make your head swim; a Siberian yak herder's language is much more complicated than a Manhattan bond trader's.
PeopleBondLanguageComplicated
As a linguist, I see the arbitrariness of strictures editors force on me as a writer.
MeSeeI SeeForceWriterEditors
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