language

One can hardly argue with the text: language is used to conquer the silent and the unknown (interesting that this should come first - one could argue that shouting, or playing loud music, or miaowing would do just as well); language allows us to express and control emotion; to reveal and camouflage our thoughts and emotions; it lets us make and avoid contact; it permits us to assert social and community identity.   Hmmm - I guess I'd have said first that it allows us to communicate (if only with ourselves) - but this is a pretty good list - leading towards the fact that it allows us to control and be controlled by the world (and yes, the page goes on).   The page, indeed, goes on, untorn, and unblemished.   But it's lying on its own, like an individual performance of linguistic virtuosity, in the middle of a Rutgers carpark.   I wish that I could report that someone was lying around in wait behind the parked cars, videoing people who stopped and read it - surely that would have enacted some point about language's power?   But alas, it was lying orphaned and unloved: a discarded, lost, stray text.