Language in action;: a guide to accurate thinking, reading and writing

258 Pages·2017·10.03 MB·English

by  Hayakawa, S. I

r
LANGUAGE
ACTION
IN
A
Guide to
ACCURATE THINKING
READING WRITING
and
Haya\awa
5. /.
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH
ILLINOIS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
NEW YORK
HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY
1947
COPYRIGHT, 1939, 1940, BY
HAYAKAWA
S. I.
COPYRIGHT, I94I, BY
HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC.
All rights reserved. No part of this hook may he rc-
produced in any form, by mimeograph or any other
means, withoutpermission in ivriting from the publisher.
[h • 10 • 46]
PHINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
PREFACE
WHAT
this book hopes to do is to offer a general system
for clearing the mind of harmful obstructions. It is an
attempt to apply certain scientific and literary principles, or, as
we may call them, semantic principles, to the thinking, talking,
listening, reading, and writing we do in everyday life.
Everyone knows how an engine, although in perfect repair,
can overheat, lose its efficiency, and stop as the result of in-
—
ternal obstructions sometimes even very minute ones. Every-
one has noticed, too, how human minds, also apparendy in
perfect repair, often overheat and stop as the result of dogmas,
received opinions, or private obsessions. Sometimes a set of
obsessions may seize multitudes of people at once, so that
hysteria becomes epidemic and nations go mad. The recur-
rence of such disorders tempts many of us to conclude that
there are fundamental and incurable defects in "human na-
ture." The fudlity of such an attitude needs hardly to be re-
marked upon. Many modern studies, notably in psychology,
anthropology, linguistics,and literary criticism, revealto us the
nature and origin of these obstructions in our intellectual ma-
chinery. Can we not, by seeking and removing them, get it to
run more efficiently.? We do not scold an engine for over-
heating, any more than we scold a man for having a fever.
Are we getting anywhere by merely scolding each other for
"lack of principle," "stupidity," "intellectual laziness," and all
the other sins we accuse each other oi?
The trouble human beings have in learning anything,
whether from discussion, from experience, from historical
events, from books, or from teachers, does not as a rule arise
from the intrinsic difficulty of the lessons to be learned. It
PREFACE
IV
arises rather from the fact that before any new notions can be
grasped, we have so much to z^wlearn: our cherished senti-
mentahties, our inherited dogmas, our superstitions, our pet
—
intellectual cliches all serving to nullify, distort, or caricature
beyond recognition the lessons we receive. As an American
humorist has said, "What's wrong with most people is not
their ignorance, but the number of things they know which
ain't so."
Perhaps the best time for the systematic study of semantic
principles is early in the college course. The freshman enters
college wide open to new ideas and new techniques, eager
to have his intellectual machinery overhauled and made
ready for the exacting tasks ahead. And in fact, experimental
tryout of Language in Action in two preliminary editions
which were used by some five thousand students in nearly
— —
fifty colleges chiefly in freshman English clearly indicates
the advantage of such early application of semantic principles.
These semantic principles I have drawn mainly from the
"General Semantics" (or "non-Aristotelian system") of Alfred
Korzybski. I have also drawn considerably from the work
done in more specialized fields of semantics by other distin-
guished writers: especially I. A. Richards, C. K. Ogden,
Bronislaw Malinowski, Leonard Bloomfield, Eric Temple Bell,
Thurman Arnold, Jean Piaget, Lucien Levy-Bruhl, Karl Brit-
ton, and Rudolf Carnap.
The necessity of synthesizing the often conflicting termi-
nologies and sometimes conflicting views of these and other
authorities has produced a result that will probably com-
pletely satisfy none of them. I make here my apologies to them
all for the liberties I have taken with their work: the omis-
sions, the distortions, the changes of emphasis, which in some
cases are so great that the originators of the theories may well
have difficulty in recognizing them as their own. If mistaken
impressions have been given of any of their views, or if.
PREFACE
V
through the omission of quotation marks around words of
misleading implications (such as "mind," "intellect," "emo-
tion"), I have increased rather than reduced the difficulties of
the subject, the fault is mine. Whenever such unscientific
terms have been used, however, they have been the result of
the exigencies of idiomatic expression rather than the result of
willful negligence. I have usually attempted (although not
always successfully, perhaps) to remove in the surrounding
context the erroneous implications of popular terminology.
In an attempt at popular synthesis such as this, I have
thought it wiser not to try to make individual acknowledg-
ments of my borrowings, since this could hardly be done
without making the pages unduly formidable in appearance.
Therefore the following brief list of works to which I am es-
pecially indebted will have to serve in lieu of footnotes and a
more detailed bibliography.
Thurman W. Arnold, The Symbols of Government, Yale Uni-
versity Press, 1935.
The Folklore of Capitalism, Yale University Press, 1937.
A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic, Oxford University Press,
1936.
Eric Temple Bell, The Search for Truth, Reynal and Hitchcock,
1934-
Men of Mathematics, Simon and Schuster, 1937.
Leonard Bloomfield, Language, Henry Holt and Company, 1933.
Boris E. Bogoslovsky, The Technique of Controversy, Harcourt,
Brace and Company, 1928.
P. W. Bridgman, The Logic of Modern Physics, The Macmillan
Company, 1927.
Karl Britton, Communication: A PhilosophicalStudy ofLanguage,
Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1939.
Rudolf Carnap, Philosophy and Logical Syntax, Psyche Miniatures
(London), 1935.
Stuart Chase, The Tyranny of Words, Harcourt, Brace and Com-
pany, 1938.
PREFACE
VI
Felix S. Cohen,"Transcendental Nonsense and the Functional Ap-
proach," Columbia Law Review, Vol. 35, pp. 809-849 (June,
1935)-
Committee on the Function of English in General Education,
Language in General Education (Report for the Commission
on Secondary School Curriculum), D. Appleton-Century
Company, 1940.
John Dewey, How We Thin\, D. C. Heath and Company, 1933.
William Empson, Seven "Types of Ambiguity, Chatto and Windus
(London), 1930.
Ernest Fenellosa, The Chinese Written Character (ed. Ezra
Pound), Stanley Nott (London), 1936.
Jerome Frank, Law and the Modern Mind, Brentano's, 1930 (also
Tudor Publishing Company, 1936).
Lancelot Hogben, Mathematics for the Million, W. W. Norton
and Company, 1937.
T. E. Hulme, Speculations, Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1924.
H. R. Huse, The Illiteracy of the Literate, D. Appleton-Century
Company, 1933.
Wendell Johnson, Language and Speech Hygiene: An Application
of General Semantics, Institute of General Semantics (Chi-
cago), 1939.
Alfred Korzybski, The Manhood of Humanity, E. P. Dutton and
Company, 1921.
N
Science and Sanity: An Introduction to on-Aristotelian
Systems and General Semantics, Science Press Printing Com-
pany (Lancaster, Pa.), 1933. Second edition, 1941.
Q. D. Leavis, Fiction andtheReading Public, Chatto and Windus
(London), 1932.
Irving Lee, "General Semantics and Public Speaking," Quarterly
J.
journal of Speech, December, 1940.
Vernon Lee, TheHandling of Words, Dodd, Mead and Company,
1923.^
Lucien Levy-Bruhl, How Natives Thin\, Alfred A. Knopf, 1926.
Kurt Lewin, Principles of Topological Psychology, McGraw-Hill
Book Company, 1936.
PREFACE
Vll
B. Malinowski, "The Problem of Meaning in Primitive Lan-
guages," Supplement I in Ogden and Richards' The Meaning
of Meaning.
C. K. Ogden, Opposition: A Linguistic and Psychological Analysis,
Psyche Miniatures (London), 1932.
C. K. Ogden and \. A. Richards, The Meaning of Meaning, Har-
court. Brace and Company, third edition, revised, 1930.
Jean Piaget, The Language and Thought of the Child, Harcourt,
Brace and Company, 1926.
The Child's Conception of the World, Harcourt, Brace and
Company, 1929.
Oliver L. Reiser, The Promise of Scientific Humanism, Oskar
Piest (Nevi' York), 1940.
L A. Richards, Science and Poetry, W. W, Norton and Company,
1926.
Practical Criticism, Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1929.
The Philosophy of Rhetoric, Oxford University Press, 1936.
Interpretation in Teaching, Harcourt, Brace and Company,
1938.
James Harvey Robinson, The Mind in the Maying, Harper and
Brothers, 1921.
Edward Sapir, Language, Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1921.
Vilhjalmur Stefansson, The Standardization of Error, W. W.
Norton and Company, 1927.
Allen Upward, The New Word: An Open Letter Addressed to
the Swedish Academy in Stoc\holm on the Meaning of the
Word IDEALIST, Mitchell Kennerley (New York), 1910.
Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class, The Modern
Library.
A. P. Weiss, The Theoretical Basis of Human Behavior, R. G.
Adams and Company (Columbus, Ohio), 1925.
V. Welby, What Is Meaning? Macmillan and Company, 1903.
I am deeply indebted to many friends and colleagues
throughout the United States for their suggestions and criti-
cism, both by letter and in conversation, during the prepara-
tion of this book. I am grateful, too, to Professor C. Wright
PREFACE
Vlll
Thomas o£ the University of Wisconsin and to Professor
Walter Hendricks of the Illinois Institute of Technology, who,
by encouraging my inquiries in this direction and by offering
me the opportunity to present these materials in the classroom,
did much to make this book possible. My greatest indebted-
ness, however, is to Alfred Korzybski. Without his system of
General Semantics, it appears to me difficult if not impossible
to systematize and make usable the array of linguistic infor-
mation, much of it new, now available from all quarters,
scientific, philosophical, and literary. His principles have in
one way or another influenced almost every page of this book,
and his friendly criticisms and patient comments have facili-
tated at every' turn the task of writin°g it. S. I. H.
Illinois Institute of Technology
Chicago
4J
CONTENTS
A STORY WITH A MORAL
I
1. THE IMPORTANCE OF LANGUAGE lO
SYMBOLS
2. 19
3. REPORTS 30
4. CONTEXTS 42
WORDS THAT DON't INFORM
5. 57
6. CONNOTATIONS 67
7. DIRECTIVE LANGUAGE 78
HOW WE KNOW WHAT WE KNOW
8. 92
9. THE LITTLE MAN WHO WASN't THERE IO3
10. CLASSIFICATIONS II
11. THE TWO-VALUED ORIENTATION 12
12. AFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION 142
13. INTENSIONAL ORIENTATION 164
14. RATS AND MEN 181
15. EXTENSIONAL ORIENTATION 193
READINGS 201
From Mark Twain, Oliver "Wendell Holmes, John
Steinbeck, Thurman Arnold, Stuart Chase, and Ben-
jamin Lee Whorf
2 LANGUAGE IN ACTION
The solution they finally hit upon, after much debate and
soul-searching, was this. They decided to give the unemployed
families "relief" of fifty dollars a month, but to insure against
the "pauperization" of the recipients, they decided that this
fifty dollars was to be accompanied by a moral lesson, to wit:
the obtaining of the assistance would be made so difficult,
humiliating, and disagreeable that there would be no temp-
tation for anyone to go through the process unless it was
absolutely necessary; the moral disapproval of the community
would be turned upon the recipients of the money at all times
in such a way that they would try hard to get "off relief" and
regain their "self-respect." Some even proposed that people
"on relief" be denied the vote, so that the moral lesson would
be more deeply impressed upon them. Others suggested that
their names be published at regular intervals in the news-
papers, so that there would be a strong incentive to get "off
relief." The city fathers had enough faith in the goodness of
human nature to expect that the recipients would be "grate-
ful," since they were "getting something for nothing," some-
thing which they "hadn't worked for."
When the plan was put into operation, however, the recipi-
ents of the "relief" checks proved to be an ungrateful, ugly
bunch. They seemed to resent the cross-examinations and in-
spections at the hands of the "relief investigators," who, they
said, "took advantage of a man's misery to snoop into every
detail of his private life." In spite of uphfting editorials in
A-town Tribune telling them how grateful they ought to be,
the recipients of the "relief" stubbornly refused to learn any
moral lessons, declaring that they were "just as good as any-
body else." When, for example, they permitted themselves the
rare luxury of a movie or an evening of bingo, their neighbors
looked at them sourly as if to say, "I work hard and pay my
taxes just in order to support bums like you in idleness and
pleasure." This attitude, which was fairly characteristic of