Even when a reporter writes with a straight tongue, the words are necessarily forked. Walter Lippmann reminds us why:
For language is by no means a perfect vehicle of meanings. Words, like currency, are turned over and over again, to evoke one set of images to-day, another tomorrow. There is no certainty whatever that the same word will call out the same idea in the reader’s mind as it did in the reporter’s.
(Quoted from page 66 of Public Opinion, by Walter Lippmann. Harcourt, Brace & Co. 1922.)
For a brief biography of Walter Lippmann, click here. For images of or relating to Walter Lippmann, click here.
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