How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph) or (Feed Chatter #.Paragraph)
Quote #7
In there, there were nurses and the doctor and the technician. The nurses were watching the relays, our blood pressure and all. They were like, "Don't worry about anything. You'll feel it all coming back in a few seconds." The doctor touched a bootstick to my head.
He said, "Okay. Could we like get a thingie, a reading on his limbic activity?" (17.5-6)
Even among doctors—hopefully highly-trained professionals—language is noticeably degraded. "Thingie" probably not something you want to hear out of your surgeon's mouth when undergoing the delicate repair to something linked into your brain.
Quote #8
"The sarcasm of my daughter notwithstanding, it is nonetheless an occasion of great moment to meet one of her erotic attachments. In the line of things, she has not brought them home, but has chosen instead to conduct her trysts at remote locales, perhaps beach huts or oxygen-rich confabularies." (28.10)
Whoa there, Mr. Durn. We know you're a professor and all, but this is some seriously complex verbiage. His use of more complex language is just one way Violet's dad tries to resist the feed and its dumbing down of American society.
Quote #9
"He says the language is dying. He thinks words are being debased. So he tries to speak entirely in weird words and irony, so no one can simplify anything he says." (28.23)
Huh. It sounds like Violet's dad's strategy of using words to avoid being dumbed down is similar to Violet's own desire to be invisible to the feed. Like father, like daughter.