Language does not stand still. Surprisingly, despite this knowledge, most speakers are fearful of change.

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

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.

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.

No child is capable of speech until he has heard other human beings speak, and even two infants reared together cannot develop a language from scratch.

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.

The dictionary is a closed system in which someone interested in the meaning of a word can go around and around and end up exactly where he started, simply because words are defined in terms of other words, and these, in turn, are defined in terms of still other words.