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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Virgil reading the Aeneid to Augustus and Octavia, by Jean-Joseph Taillasson, 1787.

Tape Delay

By Madeline Miller

How we misread Virgil for two thousand years, and what made it possible for a small group of scholars to figure it out.

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Map

Living Languages

Facts and figures on the languages of the world.

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Miscellany

The so-called Wicked Bible, published in 1631, accidentally printed the Seventh Commandment as “Thou shalt commit adultery.” The printer, Robert Barker, was fined three hundred pounds.

1983 | New York City

On the Contrary

Gloria Steinem is fed up with conversational double standards.More

c. 1190 BC | Argos

Instant Messaging

Clytemnestra receives word from the gods.More

1992 | Washington, DC

Media Saturation

The making of a pop culture president.More

Charts & Graphs

Reform Movements

Successful attempts at linguistic overhaul.

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Painting of Benjamin Franklin reading a batch of papers next to a classical bust.

Black power leader H. Rap Brown.

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

Polish American writer and academic Eva Hoffman.

Italian Franciscan friar and historian Salimbene Di Adam.

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

My language is the common prostitute that I turn into a virgin.

—Karl Kraus, c. 1910

St. Benedict

Belgian Symbolist poet, playwright, and essayist Maurice Maeterlinck.

Saint Benedict & Maurice Maeterlinck

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