Language in action

Book

Language in action / S.I. Hayakawa.

Hayakawa, S. I. (Samuel Ichiyé), 1906-1992 (Author). Rouben Mamoulian Collection (Library of Congress) (Added Author).

Summary:

Overview: What this book hopes to do is present certain principles of interpretation, or semantic principles, which are intended to act as a kind of intellectual air-purifying and air-conditioning system to prevent the poisons of verbal superstition, primitive linguistic assumptions, and the more pernicious forms of propaganda from entering our systems. These poisons, if unchecked, wastefully consume our energies in the fighting of verbal bogey-men, reduce our intellectual efficiency, and may ultimately destroy our mental health and well being. Nature to some extent provides her own safeguards against these poisons, as she does against germs and dust in the atmosphere, that is, we all intuitively learn, and at least part of the time unconsciously practice, san semantic principles, But we live in an environment shaped and partially created by hitherto unparalleled semantic influences: commercialized newspapers, commercialized radio programs, "public relation counsels," and the propaganda technique of nationalistic madmen. Citizens of a modern society need, therefore, more than ordinary "horse sense"; they need to be scientifically aware of the mechanisms of the mechanisms of interpretation if they are to guard themselves against being driven mad by the welter of words with which they are now faced.

Record details

Physical Description: xiii, 345 pages : illustrations ; 21 cm
Publisher: New York, NY : Harcourt, Brace and Company, [1941]

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:: Includes bibliographical references (pages 339-341) and index.
Formatted Contents Note:: Introduction -- Story with a moral -- 1: Importance of language -- 2: Symbols -- 3: Reports -- 4: Contexts -- 5: Words that don't inform -- 6: Connotations -- 7: Directive language -- 8: How we know what we know -- 9: Little man who wasn't there -- 10: Classifications -- 11: Two-valued orientation -- 12: Affective communication -- 13: Intensional orientation -- 14: Rats and men -- 15: Extensional orientation -- Readings -- Acknowledgments and bibliography -- Index.
Additional Physical Form available Note:: Also issued online.