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Language is one component of the human cognitive capacity which happens to be fairly amenable to enquiry. So we know a good deal about that.

I appreciate people who try and use language in an interesting way.

As languages go, English is pretty user friendly. If you look at a tiny language spoken somewhere that most of us have never heard of, chances are it's going to be so complicated that you have a hard time imagining how people can walk around speaking it without having a stroke.

I think that what computers have done is just disastrous to the language.

I don't know much about the Internet, I'm afraid.

It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially without the use of language and that language is merely an incidental means of solving specific problems of communication or reflection.

I think we're still in a muddle with our language, because once you get words and a spoken language it gets harder to communicate.

Text messaging is just the most recent focus of people's anxiety; what people are really worried about is a new generation gaining control of what they see as their language.

And I'm working at trying to find a kind of language where I won't be so easily modulated by expectation.

All true language is incomprehensible, like the chatter of a beggar's teeth.