David Crystal

“Increasingly, over the past ten years, I've come to take the view that a cultural perspective is intrinsic to the future of language teaching and learning, especially in the case of English, as it becomes increasingly global.”

“Enshrined in a language is the whole of a community's history and a large part of its cultural identity. The world is a mosaic of visions. To lose even one piece of this mosaic is a loss for all of us.”

“There is little scientific data on the point, but evidently people do speak to themselves.”

“Joke exchanges are carried on in deadly earnest, like a verbal duel-mouth-to-mouth combat. Bang, bang: you’re (linguistically) dead.”

“The story of the English writing system is so intriguing, and the histories behind individual words so fascinating, that anyone who dares to treat spelling as an adventure will find the journey rewarding.”

“The question “Why do we use language?” seems hardly to require an answer. But, as is often the way with linguistic questions, our everyday familiarity with speech and writing can make it difficult to appreciate the complexity of the skills, we have learned. This is particularly so when we try to define the range of functions to which language can be put.”

“Language may not determine the way we think, but it does influence the way we perceive and remember, and it affects the ease with which we perform mental tasks.”

“The subject matter ranges from subtle forms of intellectual sarcasm and humor to the crudest possible attacks on a person's courage, sexual prowess, or relatives. At one level, attacks may be subtle and indirect, involving allusion and figurative speech; at another, there may be explicit taunts, boasts, name calling, and jokes at the other's expense.”

“There are the many daily examples of taboo speech, usually profanities or obscenities, that express such emotions as hatred, antagonism, frustration, and surprise. The most common utterances consist of single words or short phrases (though lengthy sequences may”

“The aim of linguistics is to go beyond the study of individual languages to determine what the universal properties of language are, and to establish a ‘universal grammar’ that would account for the range of linguistic variation that is humanly possible.”

“Pragmatics studies the factors that govern our choice of language in social interaction and the effects of our choice on others.”

“The structural properties of the language are many and complex, but at least they are finite and fairly easy to identify: there are only so many sounds, letters, and grammatical constructions, and although there is a huge vocabulary, at least the units are determinate and manageable.”

“The main metaphor that is used to explain the historical relationship is that of the language family or family tree.”

“Micro computers used as word processors complement the audio facilities, enabling the interactive teaching of all four language skills reading, listening, speaking and writing.”

“Fluency [is] smooth, rapid, effortless use of language.”

“A dictionary is a reference book that lists the words of one or more languages, usually in alphabetical order, along with information about their spelling, pronunciation, grammatical status, meaning, history, and use.”

“Language death is like no other form of disappearance. When people die, they leave signs of their presence in the world, in the form of their dwelling places, burial mounds, and artefacts - in a word, their archaeology. But spoken language leaves no archaeology. When a language dies, which has never been recorded, it is as if it has never been.”

“During the later part of the 19th century, it was believed that a sound of change affected the whole of a language simultaneously: one sound system would smoothly develop into the next, and all words which contained a particular sound would be affected in the same way.”

“The Internet has given us 10 or 15 new styles of communication: long messages like blogging, and then short messages like texting and tweeting. I see it all as part of an expanding array of linguistic possibilities.”