Posts about: language

Language isn’t ‘alive’ – why this metaphor can be misleading

Language isn’t ‘alive’ – why this metaphor can be misleading

“Living”, “evolving” and “dead”: we often talk about languages as if they were living organisms. The reason for this use of a metaphor to talk about language lies in the deep complexity of language as a concept. But treating language in this way can have drawbacks: it can lead us to misunderstand the relationship between […]…