“Our language is an imperfect instrument created by ancient and ignorant men. It is an animistic language that invites us to talk about stability and constants, about similarities and normal and kinds,
about magical transformations, quick cures, simple problems, and final solutions. Yet the world we try to symbolize with this language is a world of process, change, differences, dimensions, functions, relationships, growths, interactions, developing, learning, coping, complexity. And the mismatch of our ever-changing world and our relatively static language forms is part of our problem.” - Wendell Johnson
Language isn’t planned and created. It evolves. The problem isn’t language, but how it’s used. A dire statement from a doctor and the same statement from an unsympathetic actor comes across differently. That’s not quite the fault of language.
