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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Word for Word

By Ben Zimmer

Peter Mark Roget’s Thesaurus was the creation of an obsessive list-maker that became a tool and a temptation for generations of writers.

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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.

1992 | Washington, DC

Media Saturation

The making of a pop culture president.More

1985 | Paris

To Keep the Word Alive

Writing under totalitarianism.More

c. 1969 | Vietnam

Telling a True War Story

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

Charts & Graphs

Sticks and Stones

Libel cases and their outcomes.

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Portrait of Francis Bacon in sixteenth-century armor.

American feminist, activist, and editor Gloria Steinem.

Political consultant and media advisor Mandy Grunwald.

Color portrait of German theologian and reformer Martin Luther.

Engraving of Roman poet Horace.

Black power leader H. Rap Brown.

Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, and writer Marcus Tullius Cicero.

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

It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs.

—Thomas Hardy, 1874

Engraving of Roman poet Horace.

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

Horace & Petrarch

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