Keywords Quotes

“Some of the variable words, say lunch and supper and dinner, may be highlighted but the differences are not particularly important. When we come to say `we just don't speak the same language' we mean something more general: that we have different immediate values or different kinds of valuation, or that we are aware, often intangibly, of different formations and distributions of energy and interest. In such a case, each group is speaking its native language, but its uses are significantly different, and especially when strong feelings or important ideas are in question. No single group is `wrong' by any linguistic criterion, though a temporarily dominant group may try to enforce its own uses as `correct'. What is really happening through these critical encounters, which may be very conscious or may be felt only as a certain strangeness and unease, is a process quite central in the development of a language when, in
certain words, tones and rhythms, meanings are offered, felt for, tested, confirmed, asserted, qualified, changed.”
― Raymond Williams, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society

“Bureaucracy appears in English from mC19. Carlyle in Latter-day Pamphlets (1850) wrote of `the Continental nuisance called "Bureaucracy" ', and Mill in 1848 wrote of the inexpediency of concentrating all the power of organized action `in a dominant bureaucracy'. In 1818, using an earlier form, Lady Morgan had written of the `Bureaucratic or office tryanny, by which Ireland had been so long governed'. The word was taken from fw bureaucratie, F, rw bureau - writing-desk and then office. The original meaning of bureau was the baize used to cover desks. The English use of bureau as office dates from eC18; it became more common in American use, especially with reference to foreign branches, the French influence being predominant. The increasing scale of commercial organization, with a corresponding increase in government intervention and legal controls, and with the increasing importance of organized and professional central government, produced the political facts to which the new term pointed.”
― Raymond Williams, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society

“Eleştirellik ve üretkenlik imkânlarımız, ortak bir kelime dağarcığının varlığından kesinlikle ayrılamaz; söylemimizin zenginliği, o kelime dağarcığının zenginliğinin bir işlevidir ve o dağarcığa hâkim olup onu etkin kılmak içinse, diri zihinlere, tarihsel duyarlılığa ve bir sürü soruya kulak kesilmeliyiz.”
― Raymond Williams, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society