This little book aims to give a certain perspective on the subject of language rather than to assemble facts about it. It has little to say of the ultimate psychological basis of speech and gives only enough of the actual descriptive or historical facts of particular languages to illustrate principles. Its main purpose is to show what I conceive language to be, what is its variability in place and time, and what are its relations to other fundamental human interests--the problem of thought, the nature of the historical process, race, culture, art. The perspective thus gained will be useful, I hope, both to linguistic students and to the outside public that is half inclined to dismiss lingui…
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