Quote of the Day

Hi! I have had a pretty full two or so weeks, what with life and work, and a document-management system that manages to not manage my (and others') documents all that well, so I've been pretty profoundly absent. That is sad for me, and I plan to correct it tout suite. Also, I have a post percolating in my head about militarism in the works of Joss Whedon, so hold onto your hats. Until then, QotD!

But language is a symptom, not the disease. Language is a product of thought, not the thought. Language is an act, not the motive underlying the act. Language is an effect of the structure, not the structure. And although language shapes thought, gives us the tools we have to understand the world and thus limits and informs what we can know – you can get all French-theory with me in the comment section – changing language isn’t going to take us anywhere unless we change the structure itself.

Via Sady. I love the post this quote came from, and I absolutely love the theory of language and the way words are used. I highly recommend reading the whole thing, and at some point my scanners at work will actually scan and separate documents, and I'll be able to think about something other than bar codes again.