John Rupert Firth

"The complete meaning of a word is always contextual, and no study of meaning apart from context can be taken seriously."

"Speech is our most valuable instrument, because we can make it fit our common lives. We are not born to follow words. Words follow life. It has always been so from the very beginning. In fact, the hum…"

"There is always the danger that the use of traditional grammatical terms with reference to a wide variety of languages may be taken to imply a secret belief in universal grammar. Every analysis of a p…"

"Strictly speaking, the grammatical method of resolving a sentence into parts is nothing but a fanciful procedure ; but it is the real fountain of all knowledge, since it led to the invention of writin…"

"The study of such words as work, labour, trade, employ, occupy, play, leisure, time, hours, means, self-respect, in all their derivatives and compounds in sociologically significant contexts during th…"

"The phonetic animal par excellence is man. All men are born with an infinite capacity for making noises and using them."

"You shall know a word by the company it keeps."

"Research into the detailed contextual distribution of sociologically important words, what one might call focal or pivotal words, is only just beginning."