Speakers who have grown up in the American community unconsciously know its rules about taking turns in conversations-in the same way that they know the rules of grammar and the rules about appropriate speech in various situations.

The environment does not determine man's culture it merely sets the outer limits and at the same time offers opportunities.

An inability to communicate has little to do with international friction-as is seen in the special ferocity of wars fought between people who speak the same language.

Despite the theories traditionally taught in high-school social studies, the truth is: the more primitive the society, the more leisured its way of life.

Native speakers of a language know intuitively whether a sentence is grammatical or not. They usually cannot specify exactly what is wrong, and very possibly they make the same mistakes in their own speech, but they know-unconsciously, not as a set of rules they learned in school-when a sentence is incorrect.

Gestures and facial expressions do indeed communicate, as anyone can prove by turning off the sound on a television set and asking watchers to characterize the speakers from the picture alone.

People who speak the same language can hate one another as easily as can people who speak unrelated languages.

Language does not stand still. Surprisingly, despite this knowledge, most speakers are fearful of change.