[Ads-l] "words matter"

[Geoffrey Nunberg]

When did “words matter” emerge in the culture? I’ve found it used in what looks like its current sense as early as the 1980s, though it isn’t easy to say when it became a maxim (byword? brocard? Thing?). Two early egs:

> Here was a man [Robert Penn Warren] who -- as he showed that evening in careful readings of Thomas Hardy's ``The Convergence of the Twain,'' Robert Frost's ``Provide, Provide,'' and William Butler Yeats's ``Prayer for My Daughter'' -- dares to believe that words matter. CS Monitor, 1985

> ''Speaking is action,'' Mr. [Marshall Brement] said. ''Words matter. This team is united in feeling that.'' The mission, he said, resists the notion ''that it doesn't matter what you say here.'’ NYTimes, 1981

A case-sensitive Google ngrams search on “Words matter” shows a 100+-fold increase from 1980 to 2000 (see http://tinyurl.com/kztzbs3). But was there a prominent source or subidscourse driving the popularity of the phrase it or is it a Topsyism that just growed? 

Geoff

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