Six Tuscan Poets, by Giorgio Vasari, 1544.

Six Tuscan Poets, by Giorgio Vasari, 1544. Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minnesota.

Communication

Volume V, Number 2 | spring 2012

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Preamble

Word Order

By Lewis H. Lapham

The Internet is blessed with undoubtedly miraculous applications, but language is not yet one of them. Technology cannot displace the primacy of words.

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Dictionary of American Regional English fieldworkers with Frederic G. Cassidy.

Native Tongues

By Simon Winchester

The making of the Dictionary of American Regional English, a five-thousand-page, five-volume book documenting the history of American slang.

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Map

Living Languages

Facts and figures on the languages of the world.

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Miscellany

There are sixty-eight indigenous languages in Mexico, one of which, Ayapaneco, as of 2011, had only two known speakers—and they prefer not to speak with one another.

c. 1969 | Vietnam

Telling a True War Story

Tim O’Brien searches for what is real in war.More

2008 | New York City

Last Stand

Nicholson Baker tries to stop Wikipedia deletions.More

1821 | Pisa

The Imperial Faculty

Percy Bysshe Shelley on language and the imagination.More

Charts & Graphs

Font of History

The origins of famous typefaces.

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Black and white photograph of E. B. White sitting at his typewriter with his dachshund.

American feminist, activist, and editor Gloria Steinem.

English novelist, essayist, and critic George Orwell.

Depiction of Greek philosopher Plato.

Flann O'Brien in an overcoat standing next to a Dublin Diversion sign

Black and white photograph of German writer Hermann Hesse.

When action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep.

—Ursula K. Le Guin, 1969

Engraving of Roman poet Horace.

Color engraving of Italian poet, scholar, and humanist Petrarch.

Horace & Petrarch

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