The Limitations of Language

by Terence Moore

This book explores the relation between language and our senses and emotions, taking readers into domains as diverse as wine-tasting, marriage guidance counselling, medical training and face recognition. The authors suggest that language is capable of both confusing and clarifying.

180 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1988

Reviews

[Bria · Rating 3 out of 5]

Since this is a book about language, the authors felt compelled to attempt to use some sort of writing style. I'm not sure that it succeeds, and in fact it's somewhat distracting. They also spend 2 1/2 chapters discussing wine. Otherwise, they did a pretty decent job of addressing how lonely it is to be human, and the terrors of the inevitable failure of attempts at true understanding.

[Tim · Rating 2 out of 5]

Great title and promising intro, but the authors don't really live up to its promise. It keeps falling back into impressionistic, unargued assertions in undefined terms, which doesn't really work in a book that aims to examine the limitations of language, given that the prevalence of such kinds of language is precisely one of the limitations they draw attention, for example in the quite interesting extended discussion of the language of wine.
So three stars for the basic idea and another one for the execution.

Re-read 2024: Great title, as noted before; horribly written both in style and substance. Terminally woolly. Five stars for the title, minus three for the execution. (Goodreads doesn't want to update either my review or my rating so far. Perhaps it will be corrected in a while.)