An inability to communicate has little to do with international friction-as is seen in the special ferocity of wars fought between people who speak the same language.

People who speak the same language can hate one another as easily as can people who speak unrelated languages.

A complex society is not necessarily more advanced than a simple one; it has just adapted to conditions in a more complicated way.

Letters to the editors of English and American newspapers often contain expressions of horror about the new terms that creep into the language, and these expressions are usually accompanied by dire predictions about ruination of the mother tongue.

Speakers who have grown up in the American community unconsciously know its rules about taking turns in conversations-in the same way that they know the rules of grammar and the rules about appropriate speech in various situations.

Despite the theories traditionally taught in high-school social studies, the truth is: the more primitive the society, the more leisured its way of life.

At every moment of his life the Shoshone must be careful to observe the complicated folkways of his group, to do reverence to superhuman powers, to remember the courtesies and obligations of family, to pay homage to certain sacred plants, or to avoid particular places.