Currently reading: After Babel by George Steiner 📚
Language–and this is one of the crucial propositions in certain schools of modern semantics–is the most salient model of Heraclitean flux. It alters at every moment in perceived time. The sum of linguistic events is not only increased but qualified by each new event. If they occur in temporal sequence, no two statements are perfectly identical. Though homologous, they interact. When we think about language, the object of our reflection alters in the process (thus specialized or metalanguages may have considerable influence on the vulgate). In short: so far as we experience and “realize” them in linear progression, time and language are intimately related: they move and the arrow is never in the same place.