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

François-Auguste-René de Chateaubriand complained late in life that he was going deaf. When someone mentioned the malady to Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand, he remarked, “He only thinks he is deaf because he can no longer hear anyone talking about him.”

1885 | Camden, NJ

Borrowing a Simile

Walt Whitman marvels at the ceaseless evolution of slang in America.More

1651 | London

Trains of Thought

Thomas Hobbes praises speech.More

1846 | Paris

New Media

A disorienting encounter with French technology.More

Charts & Graphs

Font of History

The origins of famous typefaces.

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Fourth President of the United States James Madison.

Russian author Viktor Pelevin.

Henry David Thoreau

French man of letters Denis Diderot.

St. Benedict

American feminist, activist, and editor Gloria Steinem.

Unexemplary words and unfounded doctrines are avoided by the noble person. Why utter them?

—Dong Zhongshu, c. 120 BC

St. Benedict

Belgian Symbolist poet, playwright, and essayist Maurice Maeterlinck.

Saint Benedict & Maurice Maeterlinck

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