Here are some quotations about the question “what is language”: The Armory of the Human MindLanguage is the armory of the human mind, and at once contains the trophies of its past and the weapons of its future conquests.(Samuel Taylor Coleridge) Records of Other Peoples ExperienceEvery individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition into which he has been born-the beneficiary inasmuch as language gives access to the accumulated records of other peoples experience, the victim in so far as it confirms him in the belief that reduced awareness is the only awareness and as it bedevils his sense of reality, so that he is all too apt to take his concepts for data, his words for actual things.(Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception, 1954) An ArtLanguage is an anonymous, collective and unconscious art; the result of the creativity of thousands of generations.(Edward Sapir) An Instinctive TendencyAs Horne Tooke, one of the founders of the noble science of philology, observes, language is an art, like brewing or baking; but writing would have been a better simile. It certainly is not a true instinct, for every language has to be learnt. It differs, however, widely from all ordinary arts, for man has an instinctive tendency to speak, as we see in the babble of our young children; whilst no child has an instinctive tendency to brew, bake, or write. Moreover, no philologist now supposes that any language has been deliberately invented; it has been slowly and unconsciously developed by many steps.(Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, 1871) The Instrument of ScienceI am not yet so lost in lexicography as to forget that words are the daughters of earth and that things are the sons of heaven. Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas: I wish, however, that the instrument might be less apt to decay, and that signs might be permanent, like the things which they denote.(Samuel Johnson, Preface, A Dictionary of the English Language, 1755) LawsIn language, the ignorant have prescribed laws to the learned.(Richard Duppa, Maxims, 1830) A Process of Free CreationLanguage is a process of free creation; its laws and principles are fixed, but the manner in which the principles of generation are used is free and infinitely varied. Even the interpretation and use of words involves a process of free creation.(Noam Chomsky) A Finite SystemAny language is necessarily a finite system applied with different degrees of creativity to an infinite variety of situations, and most of the words and phrases we use are prefabricated in the sense that we dont coin new ones every time we speak.(David Lodge, Where Its At, The State of the Language, 1980) A Stage Beyond Ape-MentalityLanguage is incomplete and fragmentary, and merely registers a stage in the average advance beyond ape-mentality. But all men enjoy flashes of insight beyond meanings already stabilized in etymology and grammar.(Alfred North Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas, 1933) A Cracked KettleLanguage is a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we long to move the stars to pity.(Gustave Flaubert) A Barrier to ProgressLanguage is the biggest barrier to human progress because language is an encyclopedia of ignorance. Old perceptions are frozen into language and force us to look at the world in an old fashioned way.(Edward de Bono) Intrinsically ApproximateLanguage is intrinsically approximate, since words mean different things to different people, and there is no material retaining ground for the imagery that words conjure in one brain or another.(John Updike, The New Yorker, December 15, 1997) A Sheet of PaperLanguage can also be compared with a sheet of paper: thought is the front and the sound the back; one cannot cut the front without cutting the back at the same time; likewise in language, one can neither divide sound from thought nor thought from sound.(Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, 1916) An Object Between Sound and ThoughtThe language is an intermediate object between sound and thought: it consists in uniting both while simultaneously decomposing them.(Roland Barthes, Elements of Semiology, 1964) A Labyrinth Language is a labyrinth of paths. You approach from one side and know your way about; you approach the same place from another side and no longer know your way about. In the actual use of expressions we make detours, we go by side-roads. We see the straight highway before us, but of course we cannot use it, because it is permanently closed. Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language. The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.(Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 1953) The Mother of ThoughtLanguage is the mother