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

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.

1818 | Dresden

Music Is the Food of Soul

Arthur Schopenhauer searches for songs in the key of life.More

1855 | Portugal

Broken English

Hopelessly lost in translation with Pedro Carolino.More

1651 | London

Trains of Thought

Thomas Hobbes praises speech.More

Charts & Graphs

Invented Languages

Building your own means of communication.

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Painting of François Rabelais.

Portrait of Swiss-born philosopher, writer, and political theorist Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Sepia toned photograph of Lewis Carroll in a suit, reading a book

American poet, journalist, and essayist Walt Whitman.

Color portrait of German theologian and reformer Martin Luther.

American author and educator Helen Keller.

Historian and novelist Philipp Blom.

It is a luxury to be understood.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1831

Portrait of Francis Bacon in sixteenth-century armor.

Missing contributor image silhouette

Francis Bacon & Joan Didion

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