Language Can Be

Life

Power

A gift

Memory

Speech

Tongue

Thought

A conveyor

Perception

A social art

A social gift

Communication

Fossil poetry

A kaleidoscope

A living thing

A social event

Not just words

What is signed

What is spoken

A body of words

A societal tool

What is written

A communal thing

Everything we do

A system of signs

The only homeland

A longing for home

A map of somewhere

A place of struggle

A window completely

An abstract concept

Memory and metaphor

A body of vocabulary

An identity of ideas

The carrier of ideas

The dress of thought

The sound of longing

The light of the mind

The mother of thought

The soul of intellect

An aspiration to music

The vehicle of thought

The writer's only tool

The archives of history

The expression of ideas

The machine of the poet

The pedigree of nations

A tool for communication

A very complicated thing

An instrument of culture

The landscape of thought

Voluntary, not necessary

An archaeological vehicle

The instrument of science

A living, vibrant material

A rich and malleable thing

A sociocultural phenomenon

A truth generally admitted

The medium of our thoughts

A compendium of translation

An instrument of liberation

The reflection of ourselves

A specific linguistic system

A nice way to remember things

The currency of consciousness

The greatest thing we possess

The source of the imagination

Part and parcel of our message

The appearances of connections

The key to the heart of people

The unification of a community

The way we summarize ourselves

What stops the heart exploding

The expression of what we think

The house of the truth of being

The property of the imagination

An old-growth forest of the mind

Desire and longing and suffering

The flashlight that shows the path

A finding-place, not a hiding place

As fragile as a little alpine plant

A mixture of statement and evocation

The picture and counterpart of thought

A thing that dreams of turning into song

A very difficult thing to put into words

To the mind more than light is to the eye

The most massive and inclusive art we know

An instrument for the attainment of science

The most elementary aspect to our humanness

The result of the creativity of generations

An anonymous, collective and unconscious art

The primary means by which we convey meaning

The principal tool with which we communicate

To inner space as light is to material space

A thing that creates the reality it describes

A whole palimpsest of human effort and history

A unifying instrument which binds people together

A more ancient and inevitable thing than any state

A first step towards communication across boundaries

A form of human reason, which has its internal logic

Our way of communicating what we want and who we are

Like music - we rejoice in beauty, range, and quality

The embodiment, the apotheosis of the human experience

Something infinitely greater than grammar and philology

What helps us understand both what is and what could be

One of the fundamental principles of human understanding

Like a mine in which gold is only found at certain depths

The apparel in which our thoughts parade before the public

The living embodiment of the thoughts that have moulded us

The poetic testament of the genius of a race and a culture

A mountainous and anonymous work of unconscious generations

A shaper of ideas, not merely a vehicle which carries ideas

An intrinsic part of who we are and what has happened to us

A city to the building of which everyone has brought a stone

An exact reflection of the character and growth of its speakers

A living thing - it must survive in our minds and on our tongues

Not subtle enough, or tender enough, to express all that we feel

The most momentous and most mysterious product of the human mind

The medium through which we discern and deliberate about the good

The vehicle through which we create our understanding of the world

The mental faculty that allows us to undertake linguistic behaviour

The property of the language itself, not anybody’s special property

Not an abstract construction of the learned, or of dictionary makers

The expression of ideas by means of speech-sounds combined into words

The blood of the soul into which thoughts run and out of which they grow

The way we interact with each other and how we grasp the world we live in

A structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary

Not simply a reporting device for experience but a defining framework for it

A great and efficient instrument in thinking, not only the vehicle of thought

A system of arbitrary vocal symbols by means of which a social group cooperates

The ability to conceive a thought, to speak it, and by doing so to make it true

The most imperfect and expensive means yet discovered for communicating thought

An instrument of human reason, not merely a medium for the expression of thought

The medium we use in the way a composer uses notes, the way a painter uses paint

A system of communication that enables us to exchange verbal or symbolic utterances

Audible, articulate, meaningful sound as produced by the action of the vocal organs

A tool adequate to provide any degree of precision relevant to a particular situation

Words that in addition to their literal meanings, convey distinct emotional intensity

Our body and our breath, our world and our thought, our perception and our unconscious

The road map of a culture - it tells us where people come from and where they are going

The use of a system of communication which consists of a set of sounds or written symbols

A formal system of signs governed by grammatical rules of combination to communicate meaning

Communication by voice, using arbitrary sounds in conventional ways with conventional meanings

Words - their pronunciation and the methods of combining them used and understood by a community

A closed structural system consisting of rules that relate particular signs to particular meanings

Like a road - it cannot be perceived all at once because it unfolds in time, whether heard or read

The amber in which a thousand precious and subtle thoughts have been safely embedded and preserved

A fallible guide, but it contains, with all its defects, a good deal of stored insight and experience

Images or tropes, which now, in their secondary use, have long ceased to remind us of their poetic origin

The armory of the human mind, containing the trophies of its past and the weapons of its future conquests

A system of conventional spoken, manual (signed), or written symbols by means of which we express ourselves

Too small a vessel to contain the emotions of mind and body that have somehow awakened a response in the spirit

A communal thing - it expresses never the exact thing but a compromise - that which is common to us and everybody

Like a path we can follow or depart from it according to our whims or needs, which undergoes change from daily use

Like soil - however rich, it is subject to erosion, and its fertility is constantly threatened by uses that exhaust its vitality

The conduit through which we share our thoughts and intentions and acquire the knowledge, customs, and values of those around us

A systematic means of communicating ideas or feelings by the use of conventionalized signs, sounds, gestures, or marks having understood meanings

The objective repository of vast accumulations of meaning and experience, which it can then preserve in time and transmit to following generations

The principal method of human communication, consisting of words used in a structured and conventional way and conveyed by speech, writing, or gesture

The system for the use of words common to a people who are of the same community or nation, the same geographical area, or the same cultural tradition

A process of free creation - its laws and principles are fixed, but the manner in which the principles of generation are used is free and infinitely varied

Something arising out of the work, needs, ties, joys, affections, and tastes of long generations of humanity, which has its bases broad and low, close to the ground

A system of communication which consists of a set of sounds and written symbols which are used by the people of a particular country or region for talking or writing

A system of conventional spoken, manual (signed), or written symbols by means of which we, as members of a social group and participants in its culture, express ourselves

A living thing we can feel changing - parts of it become old, they drop off and are forgotten, new pieces bud out, spread into leaves, and become big branches, proliferating

A human form of communication, which includes the phonetics, the phonology, the morphology, the syntax, the semantics, and the discourse context, as presented by a given speech community

A total coherent system of a set of unrelated sounds, clauses, rules, and meanings integrating with each other, and with behavior, context, universe of discourse, and observer perspective

Both a map of the world and its own world, with its own shadowlands and crevasses - places where statements that seem to obey all the language's rules are nevertheless impossible to deal with

The cognitive ability to learn and use systems of complex communication, or to describe the set of rules that makes up these systems, or the set of utterances that can be produced from those rules

A finite system applied with different degrees of creativity to an infinite variety of situations - most of the words and phrases we use are "prefabricated" in the sense that we don't coin new ones every time we speak

A possesser of the properties of productivity and displacement, which enable the creation of an infinite number of sentences, and the ability to refer to objects, events, and ideas that are not immediately present in the discourse

A freedom - as soon as we have found the words with which to express something, we are no longer incoherent, we are no longer trapped by our own emotions, by our own experiences - we can describe them, we can tell them, we can bring them out of ourselves and give them to somebody else