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.

1985 | Paris

To Keep the Word Alive

Writing under totalitarianism.More

1983 | New York City

On the Contrary

Gloria Steinem is fed up with conversational double standards.More

1871 | Oxford

Close Reading

Through the looking-glass with Lewis Carroll.More

Charts & Graphs

The Medium and the Message

Message delivery services throughout history.

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Lewis Lapham at his desk

Photograph of British writer and journalist Simon Winchester.

Black and white photograph of German-language writer Franz Kafka.

American author Gay Talese.

Japanese diarist and poet Sei Shōnagon.

Linguist, lexicographer, columnist, and editor Ben Zimmer.

Depiction of Greek philosopher Plato.

Ambrose Bierce

Language is the archives of history.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1844

St. Benedict

Belgian Symbolist poet, playwright, and essayist Maurice Maeterlinck.

Saint Benedict & Maurice Maeterlinck

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