General semantics

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For semantics in general, see Semantics.

Not to be confused with Generative semantics.
General semantics is a self improvement and therapy program begun in
the 1920s that seeks to regulate human mental habits and behaviors.
After partial launches under the names human engineering and
humanology,[1] Polish-American originator Alfred Korzybski[2] (18791950)
fully launched the program as general semantics in 1933 with the
publication of Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian
Systems and General Semantics.

In Science and Sanity, general semantics is presented as both a

theoretical and a practical system whose adoption can reliably alter
human behavior in the direction of greater sanity. In the 1947 preface to
the third edition of Science and Sanity, Korzybski wrote: "We need not
blind ourselves with the old dogma that 'human nature cannot be
changed', for we find that it can be changed." [3] However, in the opinion of
a majority of psychiatrists, the tenets and practices of general semantics
are not an effective way of treating patients with psychological or mental
illnesses. While Korzybski considered his program to be empirically based
and to strictly follow the scientific method, general semantics has been
described as veering into the domain of pseudoscience.[4]

Starting around 1940, university English professor S. I. Hayakawa (1906

1992), speech professor Wendell Johnson, speech professor Irving J. Lee,
and others assembled elements of general semantics into a package
suitable for incorporation into mainstream communications curricula. The
Institute of General Semantics, which Korzybski and co-workers founded in
1938,[5] continues today. General semantics as a movement has waned
considerably since the 1950s, although many of its ideas live on in other
movements, such as neuro-linguistic programming[6][7] and rational
emotive behavior therapy.[8]

Contents
1 Overview
1.1 "Identification" and "the silent level"
1.2 Abstracting and consciousness of abstracting
1.3 Extensional devices
 1.4 Language as a core concern
1.5 The science
2 History
2.1 Early attempts at validation
2.2 Interpretation as semantics
2.3 Lowered sights
3 The major premises
4 Connections to other disciplines
5 See also
6 Notes
7 Further reading
7.1 Related books
7.2 Related academic articles
8 External links

Overview
"Identification" and "the silent level"

In the 1946 "Silent and Verbal Levels" diagram,[9] the arrows and boxes
denote ordered stages in human neuro-evaluative processing that
happens in an instant. Although newer knowledge in biology has more
sharply defined what the text in these 1946 boxes labels "electro-
colloidal,"[10] the diagram remains, as Korzybski wrote in his last published
paper in 1950, "satisfactory for our purpose of explaining briefly the most
general and important points."[11] General semantics postulates that most
people "identify," or fail to differentiate the serial stages or "levels" within
their own neuro-evaluative processing. "Most people," Korzybski wrote,
"identify in value levels I, II, III, and IV and react as if our verbalizations
about the first three levels were 'it.' Whatever we may say something 'is'
obviously is not the 'something' on the silent levels."[11]

Institute of General Semantics "Silent and Verbal Levels" diagram, circa

1946[9]
By making it a 'mental' habit to find and keep one's bearings among the
ordered stages, general semantics training seeks to sharpen internal
orientation much as a GPS device may sharpen external orientation. Once
trained, general semanticists affirm, a person will act, respond, and make
decisions more appropriate to any given set of happenings. Although
producing saliva constitutes an appropriate response when lemon juice
drips onto the tongue, a person has inappropriately identified when an
imagined lemon or the word "lemon" triggers a salivation response.

"Once we differentiate, differentiation becomes the denial of identity,"

Korzybski wrote in Science and Sanity. "Once we discriminate among the
objective and verbal levels, we learn 'silence' on the unspeakable
objective levels, and so introduce a most beneficial neurological 'delay'
engage the cortex to perform its natural function."[12] British-American
philosopher Max Black, an influential critic of general semantics, called
this neurological delay the "central aim" of general semantics training, "so
that in responding to verbal or nonverbal stimuli, we are aware of what it
is that we are doing."[13]

In the 21st century, the physiology underlying identification and the

neurological delay is thought to involve autoassociative memory, a neural
mechanism crucial to intelligence.[14] Briefly explained, autoassociative
memory retrieves previously stored representations that most closely
conform to any current incoming pattern (level II in the general semantics
diagram) arriving from the senses. According to the memory-prediction
model for intelligence, if the stored representations resolve the arriving
patterns, this constitutes "understanding," and brain activity shifts from
evaluation to triggering motor responses. When the retrieved
representations do not sufficiently resolve newly arrived patterns,
evaluating persists, engaging higher layers of the cortex in an ongoing
pursuit of resolution. The additional time required for signals to travel up
and down the cortical hierarchy[15] constitutes what general semantics
calls a "beneficial neurological delay."[16]

Abstracting and consciousness of abstracting

Identification prevents what general semantics seeks to promote: the

additional cortical processing experienced as a delay. Korzybski called his
remedy for identification "consciousness of abstracting."[17] The term
"abstracting" is used ubiquitously in Science and Sanity. Korzybski's use of
the term is somewhat unusual and requires study to understand his
meaning. He discussed the problem of identification in terms of
"confusions of orders of abstractions" and "lack of consciousness of
abstracting."[18] To be conscious of abstracting is to differentiate among the
"levels" described above, levels II-IV being abstractions of level I
(whatever level I "is"all we really get are abstractions). The techniques
Korzybski prescribed to help a person develop consciousness of
abstracting he called "extensional devices."[19]

Extensional devices

Satisfactory accounts of general semantics extensional devices can be

found easily.[20] This article seeks to explain briefly only the "indexing"
devices. Suppose you teach in a school or university. Students enter your
classroom on the first day of a new term, and, if you identify these new
students to a memory association retrieved by your brain, you under-
engage your powers of observation and your cortex. Indexing makes
explicit a differentiating of studentsthis term from studentsprior terms. You survey
the new students, and indexing explicitly differentiates student1 from
student2 from student3, etc. Suppose you recognize one studentcall her
Annafrom a prior course in which Anna either excelled or did poorly.
Again, you escape identification by your indexed awareness that Annathis
term, this course is different from Annathat term, that course. Not identifying, you both

expand and sharpen your apprehension of "students" with an awareness

rooted in fresh silent-level observations.[21]

Language as a core concern

Autoassociative memory in the memory-prediction model describes neural

operations in mammalian brains generally.[22] A special circumstance for
humans arises with the introduction of language components, both as
fresh stimuli and as stored representations. Language considerations
figure prominently in general semantics, and three language and
communications specialists who embraced general semantics, university
professors and authors Hayakawa, Wendell Johnson and Neil Postman,
played major roles in framing general semantics, especially for non-
readers of Science and Sanity.

The science

Many recognized specialists in the knowledge areas where Korzybski

claimed to have anchored general semanticsbiology, epistemology,
mathematics, neurology, physics, psychiatry, etc. supported his work in
his lifetime, including Cassius J. Keyser, C. B. Bridges, W. E. Ritter, P. W.
Bridgman, G. E. Coghill, William Alanson White, Clarence B. Farrar, David
Fairchild, and Erich Khler. Korzybski wrote in the preface to the third
edition of Science and Sanity (1947) that general semantics "turned out to
be an empirical natural science."[23] But the type of existence, if any, of
universals and abstract objects is an issue of serious debate within
metaphysical philosophy. So Black summed up general semantics as
"some hypothetical neurology fortified with dogmatic metaphysics." [24] And
in 1952, two years after Korzybski died, American skeptic Martin Gardner
wrote, "[Korzybski's] work moves into the realm of cultism and pseudo-
science."[4]

Former Institute of General Semantics executive director Steve Stockdale

has compared GS to yoga. "First, I'd say that there is little if any benefit to
be gained by just knowing something about general semantics. The
benefits come from maintaining an awareness of the principles and
attitudes that are derived from GS and applying them as they are needed.
You can sort of compare general semantics to yoga in that respect...
knowing about yoga is okay, but to benefit from yoga you have to do
yoga."[25] Similarly, Kenneth Burke explains Korzybski's kind of semantics
contrasting it, in A Grammar of Motives, with a kind of Burkean poetry by
saying "Semantics is essentially scientist, an approach to language in
terms of knowledge, whereas poetic forms are kinds of action". [26][27]

History
Early attempts at validation
The First American Congress for General Semantics convened in March
1935 at the Central Washington College of Education in Ellensburg, WA. In
introductory remarks to the participants, Korzybski said:

General semantics formulates a new experimental branch of natural

science, underlying an empirical theory of human evaluations and
orientations and involving a definite neurological mechanism, present in
all humans. It discovers direct neurological methods for the stimulation of
the activities of the human cerebral cortex and the direct introduction of
beneficial neurological 'inhibition'....[28]

He added that general semantics "will be judged by experimentation." [29]

One paper presented at the congress reported dramatic score
improvements for college sophomores on standardized intelligence tests
after six weeks of training by methods prescribed in Chapter 29 of Science
and Sanity.[30]

Interpretation as semantics

General semantics accumulated only a few early experimental validations.

In 1938, economist and writer Stuart Chase praised and popularized
Korzybski in The Tyranny of Words. Chase called Korzybski "a pioneer" and
described Science and Sanity as "formulating a genuine science of
communication. The term which is coming into use to cover such studies
is 'semantics,' matters having to do with signification or meaning."[31]
Because Korzybski, in Science and Sanity, had articulated his program
using "semantic" as a standalone qualifier on hundreds of pages in
constructions like "semantic factors," "semantic disturbances," and
especially "semantic reactions," to label the general semantics program
"semantics" amounted to only a convenient shorthand.[32]

Hayakawa read The Tyranny of Words, then Science and Sanity, and in
1939 he attended a Korzybski-led workshop conducted at the newly
organized Institute of General Semantics in Chicago. In the introduction to
his own Language in Action, a 1941 Book of the Month Club selection,
Hayakawa wrote, "[Korzybski's] principles have in one way or another
influenced almost every page of this book...." [33] But, Hayakawa followed
Chase's lead in interpreting general semantics as making communication
its defining concern. When Hayakawa co-founded the Society for General
Semantics and its publication ETC: A Review of General Semantics in 1943
he would continue to edit ETC. until 1970Korzybski and his followers at
the Institute of General Semantics began to complain that Hayakawa had
wrongly coopted general semantics.[34] In 1985, Hayakawa gave this
defense to an interviewer: "I wanted to treat general semantics as a
subject, in the same sense that there's a scientific concept known as
gravitation, which is independent of Isaac Newton. So after a while, you
don't talk about Newton anymore; you talk about gravitation. You talk
about semantics and not Korzybskian semantics."[35]

Lowered sights
The regimen in the Institute's seminars, greatly expanded as team-taught
seminar-workshops starting in 1944, continued to develop following the
prescriptions laid down in Chapter XXIX of Science and Sanity. The
structural differential, patented by Korzybski in the 1920s, remained
among the chief training aids to help students reach "the silent level," a
prerequisite for achieving "neurological delay." Innovations in the seminar-
workshops included a new "neuro-relaxation" component, led by dancer
and Institute editorial secretary Charlotte Schuchardt (19092002).

But although many people were introduced to general semantics

perhaps the majority through Hayakawa's more limited 'semantics'
superficial lip service seemed more common than the deep internalization
that Korzybski and his co-workers at the Institute aimed for. Marjorie
Kendig (18921981), probably Korzybski's closest co-worker, director of
the Institute after his death, and editor of his posthumously published
Collected Writings: 1920-1950, wrote in 1968:

I would guess that I have known about 30 individuals who have in some
degree adequately, by my standards, mastered this highly general, very
simple, very difficult system of orientation and method of evaluating
reversing as it must all our cultural conditioning, neurological canalization,
etc.... To me the great error Korzybski madeand I carried on, financial
necessityand for which we pay the price today in many criticisms,
consisted in not restricting ourselves to training very thoroughly a very
few people who would be competent to utilize the discipline in various
fields and to train others. We should have done this before encouraging
anyone to popularize or spread the word (horrid phrase) in societies for
general semantics, by talking about general semantics instead of learning,
using, etc. the methodology to change our essential epistemological
assumptions, premises, etc. (unconscious or conscious), i.e. the un-
learning basic to learning to learn.

Yes, large numbers of people do enjoy making a philosophy of general

semantics. This saves them the pain of rigorous training so simple and
general and limited that it seems obvious when said, yet so difficult.[36]

Successors at the Institute of General Semantics continued for many years

along the founders' path. Stuart Mayper (19161997), who studied under
Karl Popper, introduced Popper's principle of falsifiability into the seminar-
workshops he led at the Institute starting in 1977. More modest
pronouncements gradually replaced Korzybski's claims that general
semantics can change human nature and introduce an era of universal
human agreement. In 2000, Robert Pula (19282004), whose roles at the
Institute over three decades included Institute director, editor-in-chief of
the Institute's General Semantics Bulletin, and leader of the seminar-
workshops, characterized Korzybski's legacy as a "contribution toward the
improvement of human evaluating, to the amelioration of human
woe...."[37]

Hayakawa died in 1992. The Society for General Semantics merged into
the Institute of General Semantics in 2003. In 2007, Martin Levinson,
president of the Institute's Board of Trustees, teamed with Paul D.
Johnston, executive director of the Society at the date of the merger, to
teach general semantics with a light-hearted Practical Fairy Tales for
Everyday Living.[38] The Institute currently offers no training workshops.

Other institutions supporting or promoting general semantics in the 21st

century include the New York Society for General Semantics,[39] the
European Society for General Semantics,[40] the Australian General
Semantics Society,[41] and the Balvant Parekh Centre for General
Semantics and Other Human Sciences (Baroda, India).[42]

The major premises

Non-Aristotelianism: While Aristotle wrote that a true definition gives the

essence of the thing defined (in Greek to ti n einai, literally "the
what it was to be"), general semantics denies the existence of such
an 'essence'.[43] In this, general semantics purports to represent an
evolution in human evaluative orientation. In general semantics, it is
always possible to give a description of empirical facts, but such
descriptions remain just thatdescriptionswhich necessarily leave
out many aspects of the objective, microscopic, and submicroscopic
events they describe. According to general semantics, language,
natural or otherwise (including the language called 'mathematics')
can be used to describe the taste of an orange, but one cannot give
the taste of the orange using language alone. According to general
semantics, the content of all knowledge is structure, so that
language (in general) and science and mathematics (in particular)
can provide people with a structural 'map' of empirical facts, but
there can be no 'identity', only structural similarity, between the
language (map) and the empirical facts as lived through and
observed by people as humans-in-environments (including doctrinal
and linguistic environments).
Time binding: The human ability to pass information and knowledge
from one generation to the next. Korzybski claimed this to be a
unique capacity, separating people from animals. This distinctly
human ability for one generation to start where a previous
generation left off, is a consequence of the uniquely human ability
to move to higher and higher levels of abstraction without limit.
Animals may have multiple levels of abstraction, but their
abstractions must stop at some finite upper limit; this is not so for
humans: humans can have 'knowledge about
knowledge','knowledge about knowledge about knowledge', etc.,
without any upper limit. Animals possess knowledge, but each
generation of animals does things pretty much in the same way as
the previous generation, limited by their neurology and genetic
makeup. For example, at one time most human societies were
 hunter-gatherers, but now more advanced means of food production
(growing, raising, or buying) predominate. Except for some insects
(for example, ants), all animals are still hunter-gatherer species,
even though many have existed longer than the human species. For
this reason, animals are regarded in general semantics as space-
binders, and plants, which are usually stationary, as energy-
binders.
Non-elementalism and non-additivity: The refusal to separate verbally
what cannot be separated empirically, and the refusal to regard
such verbal splits as evidence that the 'things' that are verbally split
bear an additive relation to one another. For example, space-time
cannot empirically be split into 'space' + 'time', a conscious
organism (including humans) cannot be split into 'body' + 'mind',
etc., therefore, people should never speak of 'space' and 'time' or
'mind' and 'body' in isolation, but always use the terms space-time
or mind-body (or other organism-as-a-whole terms).
Infinite-valued determinism: General semantics regards the problem of
'indeterminism vs. determinism' as the failure of pre-modern
epistemologies to formulate the issue properly as the failure to
consider or include all factors relevant to a particular prediction, and
failure to adjust our languages and linguistic structures to empirical
facts. General semantics resolves the issue in favor of determinism
of a special kind called 'infinite-valued' determinism which always
allows for the possibility that relevant 'causal' factors may be 'left
out' at any given date, resulting in, if the issue is not understood at
that date, 'indeterminism', which simply indicates that our ability to
predict events has broken down, not that the world is
'indeterministic'. General semantics considers all human behavior
(including all human decisions) as, in principle, fully determined
once all relevant doctrinal and linguistic factors are included in the
analysis, regarding theories of 'free will' as failing to include the
doctrinal and linguistic environments as environments in the
analysis of human behavior.
Connections to other disciplines
The influence of Ludwig Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle, and of early
operationalists and pragmatists such as Charles Sanders Peirce, is
particularly clear in the foundational ideas of general semantics. Korzybski
himself acknowledged many of these influences.[citation needed]

The concept of "silence on the objective level" attributed to Korzybski and

his insistence on consciousness of abstracting are parallel to some central
ideas in Zen Buddhism. Korzybski is not recorded to have acknowledged
any influence from this quarter, but he formulated general semantics
during the same years that the first popularizations of Zen were becoming
part of the intellectual currency of educated speakers of English. On the
other hand, later Zen-popularizer Alan Watts was influenced by ideas from
general semantics.[citation needed]
L. Ron Hubbard claimed to have used the theory in his creation of
Dianetics and acknowledged this in the books Dianetics: The Modern
Science of Mental Health, Science of Survival, and Scientology 8008.

General semantics has survived most profoundly in the cognitive

therapies that emerged in the 1950s and 1960s. Albert Ellis (19132007),
who developed Rational emotive behavior therapy, acknowledged
influence from general semantics and delivered the Alfred Korzybski
Memorial Lecture in 1991. The Bruges (Belgium) center for Solution
Focused Therapy operates under the name Korzybski Institute Training
and Research Center.[44] George Kelly, founder of Personal Construct
Psychology, was influenced by general semantics.[45] Frederick Perls and
Paul Goodman, founders of Gestalt therapy are said to have been
influenced by Korzybski[46] Wendell Johnson wrote "People in Quandaries:
The Semantics of Personal Adjustment" in 1946, which stands as the first
attempt to form a therapy from general semantics

Ray Solomonoff (July 25, 1926 December 7, 2009) was influenced[47] by

Korzybski. Solomonoff was the inventor of algorithmic probability, and
founder of algorithmic information theory (a.k.a. Kolmogorov complexity).
Another scientist influenced by Korzybski (verbal testimony) is Paul Vitanyi
(born July 21, 1944), a scientist in the theory of computation.

During the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, general semantics entered the idiom
of science fiction, most notably through the works of A. E. van Vogt, The
World of Null-A and its sequels, Robert A. Heinlein, Gulf, and Frank
Herbert, in Dune[48] and Whipping Star.[49] The ideas of general semantics
became a sufficiently important part of the shared intellectual toolkit of
genre science fiction to merit parody by Damon Knight and others; they
have since shown a tendency to reappear in the work of more recent
writers such as Samuel R. Delany, Suzette Haden Elgin and Robert Anton
Wilson. In 2008, John Wright extended van Vogt's Null-A series with Null-A
Continuum. William Burroughs references Korzybski's time binding
principle in his essay The Electronic Revolution, and elsewhere.

Neil Postman, founder of New York University's media ecology program in

1971, edited ETC.: A Review of General Semantics from 1976 to 1986.
Postman's student Lance Strate, a co-founder of the Media Ecology
Association,[50] served as executive director of the Institute of General
Semantics from 2007 to 2010.

See also
Related fields Related subjects Related persons
Cognitive science Alfred Korzybski Gregory Bateson
Cognitive therapy Memorial Sanford I. Berman
E-Prime Lecture Elwood Murray
Gestalt Therapy Harold Innis's Allen Walker Read
Language and communications William Vogt
 thought theories Robert Anton Wilson
Linguistic relativity Mapterritory Wilhelm Reich
Rational Emotive relation Ida P. Rolf
Behavior Therapy Maybe Logic Albert Ellis
Neuro-linguistic
programming
Non-Aristotelian logic
- Use in science
fiction
Propaganda
Related books
Levels of Knowing and Existence: Studies in General Semantics, by
Harry L. Weinberg.
Assignment in Eternity, (science fiction) by Robert A. Heinlein magnifies
Korzybski in the supermen of the "Gulf" novella.
Notes
1.
Korzybski, Alfred (1974). Time-Binding: The General Theory. Two Papers
19241926. Lakeville, CT: Institute of General Semantics. pp. (5), 54.

Kodish, Bruce I. (2011). Korzybski: A Biography. Pasadena, CA: Extensional

Publishing. p. 257. ISBN 978-0-9700664-0-4.

Korzybski, Alfred (1994). Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-

Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics (5th ed.). Brooklyn, NY:
Institute of General Semantics. p. xxxv. ISBN 0-937298-01-8.

Gardner, Martin (1957). Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science. New
York: Dover Publications. ch. 23, pp. 280-291.

Kodish, Bruce I. Korzybski: A Biography, p. 440.

Linder-Pelz, S. and Hall, L.M., 2007. The theoretical roots of NLP-based

coaching. The Coaching Psychologist, 3(1), pp. 1217.

Witkowski, Tomasz. "A review of research findings on neuro-linguistic

programming." Scientific Review of Mental Health Practice (2011)

Ellis, Albert. "General Semantics and Rational-Emotive Therapy." General

Semantics Bulletin, 1993, Number 58. Institute of General Semantics,
Englewood, NJ. pp. 12-28.

Kendig, M., "Alfred Korzybski's 'An Extensional Analysis of the Process of

Abstracting from an Electro-Colloidal Non-Aristotelian Point of View.'"
General Semantics Bulletin, AutumnWinter 195051, Numbers Four &
Five. Institute of General Semantics, Lakeville, CT. pp. 910.

Wright, Barbara E., "The Hereditary-Environment Continuum: Holistic

Approaches at 'One Point in Time' and in 'All Time'". General Semantics
Bulletin, 1986, Number 52. Institute of General Semantics, Englewood, NJ.
pp. 4344. Wright, professor of biology at the University of Montana,
wrote, "In the 1930s, when Korzybski wrote about colloids, they
represented the frontier of our emerging knowledge about the complex
interdependence of cellular structures and biochemical systems.... Today,
the word colloid is used very rarely; I could not find it in the indices of
several current textbooks of biochemistry. Perhaps this change in usage
came about because we now know so much more about individual kinds
of colloids; the word became so all-inclusive as to lose its usefulness."

Blake, Robert R. and Glenn V. Ramsey, editors (1951). Perception: An

Approach to Personality. New York: Ronald Press, pp. 170205; chapter 7:
"The Role of Language in the Perceptual Process" by Alfred Korzybski, p.
172.

Korzybski, Science and Sanity (5th ed.), p. 404.

Black, Max. Language and Philosophy: Studies in Method. Ithaca, NY.:

Cornell University Press. p. 239. Black's chapter about general semantics
originated as an April 1946 lecture at the State University of Iowa.

Hawkins, Jef (2004). On Intelligence. New York: Henry Holt. pp. 2931 and
7375. ISBN 978-0-8050-7456-7.

Hawkins, Jeff. On Intelligence. pp. 166167

For a short summary of the brain activity postulated in the memory-

prediction model, see Coert Visser (2004). "Understanding Intelligence".
Archived from the original on 2011-10-13. Retrieved 2011-10-03.

Korzybski, Alfred. Science and Sanity (5th ed.). p. 500

Korzybski, Alfred. Science and Sanity (5th ed.). p. 36

Korzybski, Alfred. Science and Sanity (5th ed.). p. lx

For example, a source reference for "scare quotes" and other extensional
devices not treated in this article is Postman, Neil. "Alfred Korzybski," ETC:
A Review of General Semantics, Winter 2003

Encyclopdia Britannica (1947). 10 Eventful Years: 1937 through 1946.

Chicago: Encyclopdia Britannica. Volume 4, pp. 2932. "Semantics:
General Semantics." The article, written by S.I. Hayakawa, states,
"Korzybski did not intend these extensional devices simply as things to
say by rote or to sprinkle through one's writing. Each of them was
intended to point beyond itself to subverbal levelsto observing and
feeling and absorbing as directly perceived data the nonlinguistic
actualities...." Explaining the name selection for the devices, Hayakawa
wrote, "Appropriating from formal logic the term 'extension,' which means
the aggregate of things denoted by a term (as opposed to 'intension,' the
qualities of properties implied by the term), he [Korzybski] called his rules
extensional devices."

Hawkins, Jeff. On Intelligence. p. 99

Korzybski, Alfred. Science and Sanity (5th ed.). p. xxxiv

Black, Max. Language and Philosophy: Studies in Method. p. 246.

"FOLLY with Steve Stockdale". FollyMag. June 2007. Archived from the
original on 2012-04-25. Retrieved 2011-10-03. Stockdale: "First, I'd say
that there is little if any benefit to be gained by just 'knowing' something
about general semantics. The benefits come from maintaining an
awareness of the principles and attitudes that are derived from GS and
applying them as they are needed. You can sort of compare general
semantics to yoga in that respect... knowing about yoga is okay, but to
benefit from yoga you have to 'do' yoga." Reprinted in Stockdale, Steve
(2009). Here's Something about General Semantics: A Primer for Making
Sense of Your World. Santa Fe, NM: Steve Stockdale. p. 36. ISBN 978-0-
9824645-0-2

Burke, Kenneth (1945). "Scholarly outline of Burke's "A Grammar of

Motives"". University of California Press. [Burke] would encourage the
"delayed response" (p. 238). Korzybskis technique recommends that an
individual interpose a "moment of delay" between the "Stimulus and the
Response" in order to control meaning (p. 239). According to Burke,
Korzybskis doctrine of the delayed action, as based on the consciousness
of abstracting, involves the fact that any term for an object puts the
object in a class of similar objects" (p. 240). Burke points out that
Korzybskis technique falls short with regard to the "analysis of poetic
forms": "For semantics is essentially science, an approach to language in
terms of knowledge, whereas poetic forms are kinds of action" (p. 240).

Burke, Kenneth (1945). A Grammar of Motives. University of California

Press. pp. 238242.

Korzybski, Alfred. "An Outline of General Semantics." In Papers from the

First American Congress for General Semantics, collected and arranged by
Hansell Baugh (1938). New York: Arrow Editions. p. 1.

Korzybski, Alfred. "An Outline of General Semantics." In Papers from the

First American Congress for General Semantics. p. 4.

Trainor, Joseph C. "Experimental Results of Training in General Semantics

upon Intelligence Test Scores." In Papers from the First American Congress
for General Semantics, pp. 5862.
Chase, Stuart (1966). The Tyranny of Words. New York: Harcourt, Brace.
p. 7.

Kodish, Bruce I. Korzybski: A Biography. pp. 343, 439.

Hayakawa, S. I. (1941). Language in Action. New York: Harcourt, Brace.

p. viii.

Kodish, Bruce I. Korzybski: A Biography, p. 554.

Shearer, Julie Gordon (1989). "From Semantics to the U.S. Senate: S. I.

Hayakawa." This interview has been posted through the Online Archive of
California. The cited statement by Hayakawa can be located via an
internet search for Shearer + Hayakawa + "Keeping ETC. Independent of
Korzybski" .

Kendig, Marjorie. "Reflections on the State of the Discipline, 1968".

General Semantics Bulletin, 1983, Number 50. Institute of General
Semantics, Baltimore, MD. p. 68.

Pula, Robert P. (2000). A General-Semantics Glossary: Pula's Guide for the

Perplexed. Concord, CA: International Society for General Semantics.
p. viii. ISBN 0-918970-49-0.

Levinson, Martin H., Illustrations by Paul D. Johnston (2007). Practical

Fairy Tales for Everyday Living. Lincoln, NE: iUniverse. ISBN 978-0-595-
42140-4.

http://www.nysgs.org

http://esgs.free.fr/uk

"The Australian General Semantics Society".

http://balvantparekhcentre.org.in

Gorman, Margaret (1962). General Semantics and Contemporary

Thomism. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln. p. 31.

"Korzybski International".

http://www.pcp-net.org/encyclopaedia/kelly.html

"Alfred Korzybski and Gestalt Therapy".

"The Discovery of Algorithmic Probability," Journal of Computer and

System Sciences, Vol 55, No. 1, pp. 7388 (pdf version)

Tim O'Reilly. Frank Herbert. New York, NY: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co.,
Inc., 1981. (pp. 5960) ISBN 0-8044-2666-X . "Herbert had studied general
semantics in San Francisco at about the time he was writing Dune. (At one
point, he worked as a ghostwriter for a nationally syndicated column by S.
I. Hayakawa, one of the foremost proponents of general semantics.)"

O'Reilly, 1981 (p. 180), "The influence of General Semantics is particularly

obvious in Whipping Star"...

1. "Media Ecology Association".

Further reading
Dare to Inquire: Sanity and Survival for the 21st Century and Beyond. by
Bruce I. Kodish (other languages), (2003). Robert Anton Wilson wrote:
"This seems to me a revolutionary book on how to transcend
prejudices, evade the currently fashionable lunacies, open yourself
to new perceptions, new empathy and even new ideas, free your
living total brain from the limits of your dogmatic verbal 'mind', and
generally wake up and smell the bodies of dead children and other
innocents piling up everywhere. In a time of rising rage and terror,
we need this as badly as a city with plague needs vaccines and
antibiotics. If I had the money I'd send a copy to every delegate at
the UN."
Trance-Formations: Neuro-Linguistic Programming and the Structure of
Hypnosis by Richard Bandler and John Grinder, (1981). One of the
important principlesalso widely used in political propaganda
discussed in this book is that trance induction uses a language of
pure process and lets the listener fill in all the specific content from
their own personal experience. E.g. the hypnotist might say
"imagine you are sitting in a very comfortable chair in a room
painted your favorite color" but not "imagine you are sitting in a
very comfortable chair in a room painted red, your favorite color"
because then the listener might think "wait a second, red is not my
favorite color."
The work of the scholar of political communication Murray Edelman
(19192001), starting with his seminal book The Symbolic Uses of
Politics (1964), continuing with Politics as symbolic action: mass
arousal and quiescience (1971), Political Language: Words that
succeed and policies that fail (1977), Constructing the Political
Spectacle (1988) and ending with his last book The Politics of
Misinformation (2001) can be viewed as an exploration of the
deliberate manipulation and obfuscation of the map-territory
distinction for political purposes.
Logic and contemporary rhetoric: the use of reason in everyday life by
Howard Kahane (d. 2001). (Wadsworth: First edition 1971, sixth
edition 1992, tenth edition 2005 with Nancy Cavender.) Highly
readable guide to the rhetoric of clear thinking, frequently updated
with examples of the opposite drawn from contemporary U.S. media
sources.
Doing Physics : how physicists take hold of the world by Martin H.
 Krieger, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992. A "cultural
phenomenology of doing physics." The General Semantics
connection is the relation to Korzybski's original motivation of trying
to identify key features of the successes of mathematics and the
physical sciences that could be extended into everyday thinking and
social organization.
Metaphors We Live By by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, (1980).
Philosophy in the flesh: the embodied mind and its challenge to Western
thought by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, (1997).
The Art of Asking Questions by Stanley L. Payne, (1951) This book is a
short handbook-style discussion of how the honest pollster should
ask questions to find out what people actually think without leading
them, but the same information could be used to slant a poll to get
a predetermined answer. Payne notes that the effect of asking a
question in different ways or in different contexts can be much
larger than the effect of sampling bias, which is the error estimate
usually given for a poll. E.g. (from the book) if you ask people
"should government go into debt?" the majority will answer "No",
but if you ask "Corporations have the right to issue bonds. Should
governments also have the right to issue bonds?" the majority will
answer "Yes".
Related books

The art of awareness; a textbook on general semantics by J. Samuel

Bois (other languages), Dubuque, Iowa: W.C. Brown Co., 1966, 1973,
1978; Gary David (other languages), 1996.
Crazy talk, stupid talk: how we defeat ourselves by the way we talk and
what to do about it by Neil Postman, Delacorte Press, 1976. All of
Postman's books are informed by his study of General Semantics
(Postman was editor of ETC. from 1976 to 1986) but this book is his
most explicit and detailed commentary on the use and misuse of
language as a tool for thought.
Developing sanity in human afairs edited by Susan Presby Kodish and
Robert P. Holston, Greenwood Press, Westport Connecticut,
copyright 1998, Hofstra University. A collection of papers on the
subject of general semantics.
Drive Yourself Sane: Using the Uncommon Sense of General Semantics,
Third Edition. by Bruce I. Kodish and Susan Presby Kodish. Pasadena,
CA: Extensional Publishing, 2011.
Language habits in human afairs; an introduction to General Semantics
by Irving J. Lee, Harper and Brothers, 1941. Still in print from the
Institute of General Semantics. On a similar level to Hayakawa.
The language of wisdom and folly; background readings in semantics
edited by Irving J. Lee, Harper and Row, 1949. Was in print (ca.
2000) from the International Society of General Semanticsnow
merged with the Institute of General Semantics. A selection of
essays and short excerpts from different authors on linguistic
themes emphasized by General Semanticswithout reference to
Korzybski, except for an essay by him.
 Mathsemantics: making numbers talk sense by Edward MacNeal,
HarperCollins, 1994. Penguin paperback 1995. Explicit General
Semantics combined with numeracy education (along the lines of
John Allen Paulos's books) and simple statistical and mathematical
modelling, influenced by MacNeal's work as an airline transportation
consultant. Discusses the fallacy of Single Instance thinking in
statistical situations.
Operational philosophy: integrating knowledge and action by Anatol
Rapoport, New York: Wiley (1953, 1965).
Semantics by Anatol Rapoport, Crowell, 1975. Both general semantics
along the lines of Hayakawa, Lee, and Postman and more technical
(mathematical and philosophical) material. A valuable survey.
Rapoport's autobiography Certainties and Doubts : A Philosophy of
Life (Black Rose Books, 2000) gives some of the history of the
General Semantics movement as he saw it.
"Language Revision by Deletion of Absolutisms," by Allen Walker Read.
Paper presented at the ninth annual meeting of the Semiotic Society
of America, Bloomington, IN, 13 October 1984. Published in ETC: A
Review of General Semantics. V42n1, Spring 1985, pp. 712.
People in Quandaries: the semantics of personal adjustment by Wendell
Johnson, 1946still in print from the Institute of General Semantics.
Insightful book about the application of General Semantics to
psychotherapy; was an acknowledged influence on Richard Bandler
and John Grinder in their formulation of Neuro-Linguistic
Programming.
Your Most Enchanted Listener by Wendell Johnson, Harper, 1956. Your
most enchanted listener is yourself, of course. Similar material as in
People in Quandaries but considerably briefer.
Living With Change, Wendell Johnson, Harper Collins, 1972.
General Semantics in Psychotherapy: Selected Writings on Methods
Aiding Therapy, edited by Isabel Caro and Charlotte Schuchardt
Read, Institute of General Semantics, 2002.
Related academic articles

Bramwell, R. D. (1981). The semantics of multiculturalism: a new

element in curriculum. Canadian Journal of Education, Vol. 6, No. 2
(1981), pp. 92101.
Clarke, R. A. (1948). General semantics in art education. The School
Review, Vol. 56, No. 10 (Dec., 1948), pp. 600605.
Chisholm, F. P. (1943). Some misconceptions about general semantics.
College English, Vol. 4, No. 7 (Apr., 1943), p. 412-416.
Glicksberg, C. I. (1946) General semantics and the science of man.
Scientific Monthly, Vol. 62, No. 5 (May, 1946), pp. 440446.
Hallie, P. P. (1952). A criticism of general semantics. College English, Vol.
14, No. 1 (Oct., 1952), pp. 1723.
Hasselris, P. (1991). From Peral Harbor to Watergate to Kuwait:
"Language in Thought and Action". The English Journal, Vol. 80, No.
2 (Feb., 1991), pp. 2835.
Hayakawa, S. I. (1939). General semantics and propaganda. Public
 Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 3 No. 2 (Apr., 1939), pp. 197208.
Krohn, F. B. (1985). A general semantics approach to teaching business
ethics. Journal of Business Communication, Vol. 22, Issue 3
(Summer, 1985), pp 5966.
Maymi, P. (1956). General concepts or laws in translation. The Modern
Language Journal, Vol. 40, No. 1 (Jan., 1956), pp. 1321.
O'Brien, P. M. (1972). The sesame land of general semantics. The
English Journal, Vol. 61, No. 2 (Feb., 1972), pp. 281301.
Rapaport, W. J. (1995). Understanding understanding: syntactic
semantics and computational cognition. Philosophical Perspectives,
Vol. 9, AI, Connectionism and Philosophical Psychology (1995),
pp. 4988.
Thorndike, E. L. (1946). The psychology of semantics. American Journal
of Psychology, Vol. 59, No. 4 (Oct., 1946), pp. 613632.
Whitworth, R. (1991). A book for all occasions: activities for teaching
general semantics. The English Journal, Vol. 80, No. 2 (Feb., 1991),
pp. 5054.
Youngren, W. H. (1968). General semantics and the science of meaning.
College English, Vol. 29, No. 4 (Jan., 1968), pp. 253285.
Kenyon, R. E. (1988). The Impossibility of Non-identity Languages.
General Semantics Bulletin, No. 55, (1990), pp. 43-52.
Kenyon, R. E. (1993). E-prime: The Spirit and the Letter. Etc.: A Review
of General Semantics. Vol. 49 No. 2, (Summer 1992). pp.&nbsp:185-
188
External links
Institute of General Semantics
Institute of General Semantics in Europe
New York Society for General Semantics
European Society For General Semantics
Australian General Semantics Society
ETC A Review of General Semantics Index
Authority control NDL: 00564208
Categories:
Human communication
General semantics
1933 introductions

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