Well, different languages are based on different ideas. Some languages explore the computational usefulness of a single data structure, like APL with arrays or Forth with stacks. Lisp is pretty big, but yes you could say it emphasizes lists. (If you're looking for a language that emphasizes strings, try SNOBOL or maybe Tcl?) Other languages explore other ideas, like Haskell with purity, Prolog with unification, or Smalltalk with message passing. And there are general-purpose languages that don't try to make any particular point about computation, like C, Java, JavaScript, Perl, Python, Ruby, PHP, etc.