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Raymond Williams

“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
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Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society by Raymond Williams
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