“Language is the product of synergism between values of the society, communication theory, biology, physiology, physics (of the inherit limitations of our brains as well as our phonetics), and human thought. I believe this is also true of the engine of language, grammar.
Both modern linguistics and the bulk of the philosophy of language have chosen to separate language from culture in their quests to understand human communication. By this move they fail to come to grips with language as a “natural phenomenon,” to use the words the philosopher John Searle. Many linguists and philosophers since the 1950s have characterized language almost exclusively in terms of mathematical logic. It is almost as if the fact that language has meaning and is spoke by human beings is irrelevant to the enterprise of understanding it.”
From volume V of the file · Book · 21st century
Themes: language & writing