Text 10A1-IV

No two historical epochs, no two social classes, no two localities use words and syntax to signify exactly the same things, to send identical signals of valuation and inference. Neither do two human beings. Each living person draws, deliberately or in immediate habit, on two sources of linguistic supply: the current vulgate corresponding to his level of literacy, and a private thesaurus. The latter is inextricably a part of his subconscious, of his memories so far as they may be verbalized, and of the singular, irreducibly specific ensemble of his somatic and psychological identity.

Part of the answer to the notorious logical conundrum as to whether or not there can be “private language” is that aspects of every language-act are unique and individual. They form what linguists call an “idiolect”. Each communicatory gesture has a private residue. The “personal lexicon” in every one of us inevitably qualifies the definitions, connotations, and semantic moves current in public discourse. The concept of a normal or standard idiom is a statistically-based fiction (though it may, as we shall see, have real existence in machine-translation). The language of a community, however uniform its social contour, is an inexhaustibly multiple aggregate of speech-atoms, of finally irreducible personal meanings.

George Steiner. After babel: aspects of language and translation. London: Oxford University Press, 1975, p. 45-6 (adapted).