You know you are a nerd when...

So I was reading an article by Marxist critic Terry Eagleton the other night. The article, incredibly methodical and scientific in its language was rather helpful in my understanding of how Marxism is relevant to literary production or print culture. Funny thing is, that isn't what makes me a nerd. See, there is a gem in his technical prose, so eloquent, I nearly orgasmed reading it. I kid you not! Allow me to quote:

Language, that most innocent and spontaneous of common currencies, is in reality a terrain scarred, fissured and divided by the cataclysms of political history, strewn with the relics of imperialist, nationalist, regionalist and class combat. (1148, The Critical Tradition, Ed. Richter)

Sigh. I want to paint this sentence and then stare at it forever. It is so sparing with words but so abundant in meaning. I mean, Derrida takes several pages of incredibly confusing prose to make a similar point. The point that language carries with it a plethora of meaning and--like a terrain, we traverse it again and again creating new scars, new ruptures, and new relics. But more provokative to me is this idea that language is also a currency. That is, language--ilke money--is something to earn, to purchase with, to invest with, or (my favorite) to bribe with. What a rich metaphor, no?