Hugh So let's talk about instead about flexibility of language - linguistic elasticity if you like.
Stephen Yes, I think I said earlier that our language, English -
Hugh As spoken by us -
Stephen As we speak it, yes, certainly, defines us. We are defined by our language if you will.
Hugh (to camera) Hullo! We're talking about language.
Stephen Perhaps I can illustrate my point - let me at least try. Here's a question.
Hugh What is it?
Stephen Ah, my question is this: is our language, English, capable, is English capable of sustaining demagoguery?
Hugh Demagoguery?
Stephen Demagoguery.
Hugh And by demagoguery you mean ...?
Stephen By demagoguery I mean demagoguery.
Hugh I thought so.
Stephen I mean highly-charged oratory, persuasive whipping up rhetoric. Listen to me, listen to me, if Hitler had been British would we, under similar circumstances have been moved, charged up, fired by his inflammatory speeches, or would we simply have laughed? Is English too ironic to sustain Hitlerian styles, would his language simply have rung false in our ears?
Hugh (to camera) We're talking about things ringing false in our ears.
Stephen Hmm, may I compartmentalise? I hate to, but may I? May I? Is our language a function of our British cynicism, tolerance, resistance to false emotion, humour and so on, or do those qualities come extrinsically - extrinsically, from the language itself? It's a chicken and egg problem.
Hugh (to camera) We're talking about chickens, we're talking about eggs.
Stephen Let me start a leveret here: there's language, the grammar, the structure - then there's speech. Listen to me, listen to me, there's chess and there's a game of chess. Mark the difference for me, mark it please.
Hugh (to camera) We've moved on to chess.
Stephen Imagine a piano keyboard, eighty-eight keys, only eighty-eight and yet, and yet, hundreds of new melodies, new tunes, new harmonies are being composed upon hundreds of keyboards every day in Dorset alone. Our language, Tiger, our language, hundreds of thousands of available words, frillions of possible legitimate new ideas, so that I can say the following sentence and be utterly sure that nobody has ever said it before in the history of human communication: "Hold the newsreader's nose squarely, waiter, or friendly milk will countermand my trousers." Perfectly ordinary words, but never before put in that precise order. A unique child delivered of a unique mother.
Hugh looks at camera, opens mouth as if to speak, decides against it.
Stephen And yet, oh and yet, all of us spend our days saying the same things, time after weary time: "I love you", "Don't go in there", "Get out", "You have no right to say that", "Stop it", "why should I?", "That hurt", "Help", "Marjorie is dead". That surely is a thought to take out for a cream tea on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
Hugh So to you language is more than just a means of communication?
Stephen Er, of course it is, of course it is, of course it is. Language is my mother, my father, my hunsband, my brother, my sister, my whore, my mistress, my check-out girl, language is a complimentary moist lemon-scented cleansing square or handy freshen-up wipette. Language is the breath of God, language is the dew on a fresh apple, it's the soft rain of dust that falls into a shaft of morning sun when you pull from an old bookshelf a forgotten volume of erotic memoirs; language is the faint scent of urine on a pair of boxer shorts, it's a half-remembered childhood birthday party, a creak on the stair, a spluttering match held to a frosted pane, the warm wet, trusting touch of a leaking nappy, the hulk of a charred Panzer, the underside of a granite boulder, the first downy growth on the upper lip of a Mediterranean girl, cobwebs long since overrun by an old Wellington boot.
Hugh Goodnight.

in A Bit of Fry and Laurie, series one, episode two.