“Race had never been a defining element in successful nation states. The true definition always depended far more on distinctions in language, culture, and political institutions. Southerners spoke precisely the same language as Northerners, so there was no distinction there.”

— William C. Davis

Source: Look Away!: A History of the Confederate States of America (2002), p. 20

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

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William C. Davis 17

American historian 1946

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“The distinction between "language" and "speech" rests on easily observable facts. The theoretical aspect of the issue has been raised in contemporary literature only by de Saussure, although in the terminological sense all the languages (I refer here to our cultural circle and its traditions), beginning with the distinction … lingua and sermo in Latin, accept the difference between "language" as a system of linguistic facts and "speech" as the name of a type of action. Following de Saussure, that theoretical distinction has been adopted in all contemporary linguistics. Gardiner distinguishes between speech as an activity with clearly utilitarian ends in view, and language as a precise knowledge pertaining to communication by means of verbal signs'*. The differentiation has been adopted in the Marxist literature of the subject, linguistic, psychological, etc. In his Psychology (in Russian) S. L. Rubinshtein defines speech as language functioning in the context of individual consciousness, and compares the difference between speech and language to the difference between individual and social consciousness.”

Adam Schaff (1913–2006) Polish Marxist philosopher and theorist

Source: Introduction to semantics, 1962, p. 316

“The more elevated a culture, the richer its language. The number of words and their combinations depends directly on a sum of conceptions and ideas; without the latter there can be no understandings, no definitions, and, as a result, no reason to enrich a language.”

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian dramatist, author and physician

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Letters

“The basic pleasure in the phonetic elements of a language and in the style of their patterns, and then in a higher dimension, pleasure in the association of these word-forms with meanings, is of fundamental importance. This pleasure is quite distinct from the practical knowledge of a language, and not the same as an analytic understanding of its structure. It is simpler, deeper-rooted, and yet more immediate than the enjoyment of literature.”

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892–1973) British philologist and author, creator of classic fantasy works

English and Welsh (1955)

“The framers of the Constitution well understood that each locality, having separate and distinct interests, required separate and distinct laws, domestic institutions, and police regulations adapted to its own wants and its own condition; and they acted on the presumption, also, that these laws and institutions would be as diversified and as dissimilar as the States would be numerous, and that no two would be precisely alike, because the interests of no two would be precisely the same.”

Stephen A. Douglas (1813–1861) American politician

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1850s

“In world history, those who have helped to build the same culture are not necessarily of one race, and those of the same race have not all participated in one culture. In scientific language, culture is not a function of race.”

Ruth Benedict (1887–1948) American anthropologist and folklorologist

Race: Science and Politics [1940], ch. 2

“Language has always been important in politics, but language is incredibly important to the present political struggle.”

Stephen Colbert (1964) American political satirist, writer, comedian, television host, and actor

New York Magazine interview http://nymag.com/news/politics/22322/ (16 October 2006)
Context: Language has always been important in politics, but language is incredibly important to the present political struggle. Because if you can establish an atmosphere in which information doesn't mean anything, then there is no objective reality. The first show we did, a year ago, was our thesis statement: What you wish to be true is all that matters, regardless of the facts. Of course, at the time, we thought we were being farcical.

“Our country, our nation is built by two institutions, the state and the language. A language whose epicenter today is no longer on these banks of the Seine, but probably much more towards the Congo River basin.”

Emmanuel Macron (1977) 25th President of the French Republic

Macron lashes out at Zemmour: “Our identity is not built on narrow-mindedness" https://palnws.be/2021/09/macron-haalt-uit-naar-zemmour-onze-identiteit-is-niet-gebouwd-op-bekrompenheid/
2017, 2021

“It is said that it is not good for man to be alone. This is true, not only in the sense in which our women’s rights’ friends so zealously and wisely teach, but it is true as to nations. The voice of civilization speaks an unmistakable language against the isolation of families, nations and races, and pleads for composite nationality as essential to her triumphs. Those races of men who have maintained the most distinct and separate existence for the longest periods of time; which have had the least intercourse with other races of men are standing confirmation of the folly of isolation. The very soil of the national mind becomes in such cases barren, and can only be resuscitated by assistance from without.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1860s, Our Composite Nationality (1869)

“Let me make it very clear to you, it is no doubt that the state language of Pakistan is going to be Urdu and no other language. Anyone who tries to mislead you is really the enemy of Pakistan. Without state language, no nation can remain tied up solidly together and function. Look at the history of every government judgement substitute language. Therefore, so far as the State language is concerned, Pakistan's state language shall be Urdu.”

Muhammad Ali Jinnah (1876–1948) Founder and 1st Governor General of Pakistan

Address to a huge public rally in w:Dhaka, w:East Bengal (then the eastern wing of the w:Dominion of Pakistan and now the independent state of w:Bangladesh) (21 March 1948)

“The present article is almost wholly devoted to a single problem—the definition of truth. Its task is to construct—with reference to a given language—a materially adequate and formally correct definition of the term 'true sentence. This problem, which belongs to the classical problems of philosophy, raises considerable difficulties. For although the meaning of the term 'true sentence' in colloquial language seems to be quite clear and intelligible, all attempts to define this meaning more precisely have hitherto been fruitless, and many investigations in which this term has been used and which started with apparently evident premisses have often led to paradoxes and antinomies (for which, however, a more or less satisfactory solution has been found). The concept of truth shares in this respect the fate of other analogous concepts in the domain of the semantics of language.”

Alfred Tarski (1901–1983) Polish-American logician

"The Concept of Truth in Formalized Languages" (1931) in Logic, Semantics, Metamathematics: Papers from 1923 to 1938 (1956) Tr. J. H. Woodger.

“Race had never been a defining element in successful nation states. The true definition always depended far more on distinctions in language, culture, and political institutions. Southerners spoke precisely the same language as Northerners, so there was no distinction there.”

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William C. Davis 17

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