“Academics don't normally manage to alter people's way of thinking through their strength of argument.”

“Language has no independent existence apart from the people who use it. It is not an end in itself it is a means to an end of understanding who you are and what society is like. ”

“Ever since the arrival of printing - thought to be the invention of the devil because it would put false opinions into people's minds - people have been arguing that new technology would have disastrous consequences for language.”

“English has been this vacuum cleaner of a language, because of its history meeting up with the Romans and then the Danes, the Vikings and then the French and then the Renaissance with all the Latin and Greek and Hebrew in the background.”

“Likewise, there is no evidence that texting teaches people to spell badly: rather, research shows that those kids who text frequently are more likely to be the most literate and the best spellers, because you have to know how to manipulate language.”

“Academics don't normally manage to alter people's way of thinking through their strength of argument.”

“The Internet has given us 10 or 15 new styles of communication: long messages like blogging, and then short messages like texting and tweeting. I see it all as part of an expanding array of linguistic possibilities.”