Truly essential reading | Language in Thought and Action: Fifth Edition

Good Condition and Easy Transaction | Language in Thought and Action: Fifth Edition | S.I. Hayakawa, Alan R. Hayakawa

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	• Language in Thought and Action: Fifth Edition S.I. Hayakawa, Alan R. Hayakawa Harvest Original, 1991 - 196 pages average customer review:based on 28 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Read and re-read

The best and easiest to understand in the field of semantics -- always fascinating. I review it every few years and enjoy it all over again.

Truly essential reading

I read this book nearly 20 years ago in school and it has shaped the way I speak and listen ever since. I recently bought it to read again. I think if I could only read one book this may be the one.

Good Condition and Easy Transaction

The book is in great condition and it was sold for way less than its retail price. The transaction was fast and easy. Thanks a lot

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It arrived and had pages in it; once again, I was blown away by having my low standards easily met.

In the big scary online shopping world that sometimes stabs you in the finance, I once again emerged unknifed and ready to shop, and love, yet again.

P.S. - STOP MAKING ME WRITE REVIEWS, AMAZON!

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Useful in daily life: Avoid being manipulated by words

This is one of the most valuable books I've ever read. Hayakawa lays forth how we are all usually dealing with "words" rather than dealing with "reality".

My own example is Bush's use of words in molding American attitudes regarding Iraq. Initially he was seeking "Weapons of Mass Destruction". Who could be against that? When no WMD's were found he completely "re-branded" the war. It was now the "Global War Against Terrorism". Well, who could be against that either? Much of the American public never got past these labels. When the they think of Iraq the kneejerk mental response is "oh, that's the Global War Against Terrorism", and their thinking process stops.

Should we have invaded Iraq? For the purposes of this discussion I don't care, the point here is that most of the American public did not *think* about the *reality* of what invading Iraq meant.

Hayakawa's analogy is of a "map" which describes a certain "territory". When using a map, we always keep in mind that the "map is not the territory". That is, when we look at a dot on the map we know that it's not *really* a town, that it is just a very simplistic and primitive representation that a *real* town exists. *And* we always keep in mind that it's only the real town that we care about.

Words are just a mental "map" of reality, a shorthand of reality that we carry in our heads because our intelligences cannot directly comprehend reality itself in all of its richness and complexity. E.g. the whole Iraq issue, past and present, is incredibly extraordinarily complex. To understand it would require genius and dedication. But to just think of it as the "Global War Against Terrorism" is quite easy. The problem is when people confuse the map with the territory and think that the Iraq issue is *not* complex at all. They get caught up in their mental label of the "Global War Against Terrorism" and *never* even *attempt* to investigate the complexity of the *reality* of Iraq.

Ok, I picked Iraq as a very current and vitally important issue. But maybe that example is polarizing, so I'll mention Hayakawa's own personal example. Hayakawa grew up during World War II. In the mind of the American public, he was a "Jap". When people thought of him as a "Jap", their thought process about him stopped completely at that point. Having identified him on their semantic map as something potentially evil, they could not be bothered to compare their map against the reality of who he actually *was*. Using the example of a theoretical elderly Japanese man, Hayakawa pointed out that there is a *big* difference between an "old Jap", and an "elderly Japanese gentleman". A person's entire sense and experience of the actual person, i.e. their experience of *reality* about the person, can be entirely colored by which *mere words* they used to identify him in their mental map, because they may never be bothered to care or find out about the complexities of the person himself.

Knowledge of this power of semantics as gained from the book is extremely valuable, you'll start being able to see it in use everywhere.

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A revised, updated edition of S. I. Hayakawa?s classic work on semantics. He discusses the role of language, its many functions, and how language shapes our thinking. Introduction by Robert MacNeil; Index.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

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