Language is not a handmaiden to perception; it is perceptio… - Stanley Fish

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Language is not a handmaiden to perception; it is perception; it gives shape to what would otherwise be inert and dead. The shaping power of language cannot be avoided. We cannot choose to distance ourselves from it. We can only choose to employ it in one way rather than another.

Stanley Fish

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About Stanley Fish

Stanley Eugene Fish (born 19 April 1938) is an American literary theorist and legal scholar. He was born and raised in Providence. He is the Davidson-Kahn Distinguished University Professor of Humanities and a professor of law at Florida International University, in Miami, as well as Dean Emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and the author of 12 books.

Also Known As

Alternative Names: Stanley Eugene Fish • Stanley E. Fish

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William Zinsser Joseph Joubert Naomi Shihab Nye Robert McKee Umberto Eco

Additional quotes by Stanley Fish

It may sound paradoxical, but verbal fluency is the product of many hours spent writing about nothing, just as musical fluency is the product of hours spent repeating scales.

What we know of the world comes to us through words, or, to look at it from the other direction, when we write a sentence, we create a world, which is not the world, but the world as is appears within a dimension of assessment.

People write or speak sentences in order to produce an effect, and the success of a sentence is measured by the degree to which the desired effect has been achieved.

Language is not a handmaiden to perception; it is perception; it gives shape to what would otherwise be inert and dead. The shaping power of language… - Stanley Fish

About Stanley Fish

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Additional quotes by Stanley Fish