The fat of sentences is sold to us with the meat untrimmed, and
we pay a heavy price in waste for all our information.
How silly we would feel in a powdered wig, exposing our calves
in silk knickers, or wearing long peacock feathers, silver buckles,
or carrying a fan: yet we bear the language rules of that age of
Aristocracy with patience and enthusiasm.
Of course snobbery is part of every language difficulty: WE
have learned useless language ornamentation. So shall YOU!
The greatest enemies of language are the bureaucrat and the
professional political manipulator: the first is ignorant,
stubborn, and a subtle verbal defender of his bureau against the
people; the second deals in "double speak" wherein he shrewdly
hides his real character under a patriotic lexicon of grammatical
lies.
--Stanley Berne. Future Language,
NY: Horizon Press, 1976.
An Archives of Post-Modern Literature Series, publication no. 103.
pp 107, 110, 112.
And then it is soon discovered that the forms of the past are merely
the excuse by which a powerful ruling oligarchy have made a
comfortable home for themselves in the midst of a decaying order,
while the rest of us discover to our horror that the comfortable rules
of the past are oppressing and frustrating us: Then it is a time that
has come to re-examine our real position and our real problems, and
seek answers and solutions which may meet entirely new conditions,
conditions which now do not automatically answer to the rules which we
have inherited.
-- Stanley Berne. Future Language, NY: Horizon Press, 1976.
An Archives of Post-Modern Literature Series, publication no. 103. pp.33-34.
Creative acts are most often the work of rather young people who have
not yet learned the profit inherent in selfishness.
-- Stanley Berne. Future Language, NY: Horizon Press, 1976.
An Archives of Post-Modern Literature Series, publication no. 103. p.128.
The Sentence ws invented by the 18th century and was based on the
academic study of Hebrew, Greek and Latin.... The regularization of
both grammar and spelling was the likely result of seeking to apply
Law and Order to the human spirit.... The Sentence is thought-control,
thought-restraint, effective censorship.... The Sentence is not
organic to language. Only thought is.... The airplane defied walking,
as the imagination defies the earth-bound Sentence.... Thought will
not be confined, private conversation is never conducted in
Sentences.... Money and Sentences are made of the same base measure:
popular success.... Popular Success is crippled, caned, strapped,
twisted, limping, broken: lusting only after pornography -- its pain
so great, it seeks relief only in distraction.
-- Stanley Berne. Future Language, NY: Horizon Press, 1976.
An Archives of Post-Modern Literature Series, publication no. 103.