For over 50 years, Language in Thought and Action has examined language through the lens of modern semantics. With an understanding of the roles and different uses of language, one can better communicate with those around them. Like the first edition, Language in Thought and Action uses poignant and relevant examples to better explain the subtleties and nuiances of language.
Description
Includes bibliographical references [p. 266-271] and index.
Table of Contents
1. Language and Survival. 2. Symbols. 3. Reports, Inferences, Judgments. 4. Contexts. 5. The Double Task of Language. 6. The Language of Social Cohesion. 7. The Language of Social Control. 8. The Language of Affective Communication. 9. How We Know What We Know. 10. The Little Man Who Wasn't There. 11. Classification. 12. The Two-Valued Orientation. 13. The Multi-valued Orientation. 14. Art and Tension. 15. Poetry and Advertising. 16. The Dime in the Juke Box. 17. The Empty Eye. 18. Rats and Men. 19. Towards Order Within and Without.
This book is divided into 2 parts, the functions of language and language and thought. The deepest debt of the author in this book is to the general semantics. It is designed to educate the reader using concepts that are first explained in straightforward terms …show more content…
Learning from Obama, I should take advantage of informative connotation to delivery the news and use affective language like humor and familiar language to grab reader or audience’s sight. It helps rating of the show.
The Open and Closed Mind Hayakawa summarized The Open and Closed mind on pages 131-3. It tells that people with closed minds apparently feel threatened and fearful. If someone trusted the speaker, but rejected his statement, he would view the speaker as unconsciously on the enemy side. If someone rejected the speaker, the statement is unacceptable to him too. He rejects both. They are two-valued people, which have to like everything about the speaker or nothing. Reasonably secure and well organized persons enjoy their own belief system, but they are also open to information about their disbeliefs system. They can empathize with persons who hold others ideas that they do not believe in, is to have an open mind.
A question raised up in my mind is that, am I a news anchor with an open mind? Theoretically, anchor should be open-minded, to writing the true story and report the fact o the audiences. But, if I am a closed-mind anchor, I know in advance which side I am on, and engage the correspondent or accept the article that will give aid and comfort to that side. Forsaking the obligation to illuminate, I may turn on the heat. However, the result is inevitable: the other side fights back. But in this world, whatever the country is
In many ways, it is about the evolution of prejudice in individual minds as a consequence of confusing levels of abstraction, so that "Pigs are dirty" implies that Hampton is dirty because Hampton is a pig, even though Hampton has always demonstrated excellent hygiene. The problem is that "Hampton" is a specific pig, being observed at a specific time, and is at a different level of abstraction than "pig" in general [or even "farm animal" or "animal" or all kinds of other categories you could put him into]. Even if my whole experience of pigs leads me to believe they are dirty, my experience remains limited, and I may err in applying the trait to Hampton. Unwillingness to let Hampton be clean is a prejudice related to cognitive inflexibility - often related to the inability to see different levels of abstraction for what they are. The characteristic metaphor here is that "maps" - levels of abstraction - fail to correspond to "territories." He details the differences between reports, inferences, and judgments, which are easily confused, at times with significant consequences.
The book does not entirely dwell on the negative. It has interesting discussions of the ways we use talk ritually. In such instances, the words have little to do with what is communicated, or why the words are said. These analyses are well-done and instructive.
Towards the end of the book, Hayakawa turns from describing the more basic aspects of representing information to the ways certain systems of representation - such as television - change our perspective and understanding in ways that might not be desirable. He describes the effects of television on advertising, human motivation, and politics. He ends with a discussion of "cultural lag," which is a sociological term for "the continued existence of obsolete institutional habits and forms." The characteristic metaphor is having "horse and buggy" ways - living as though one's social conventions were appropriate even though technological and social advancement have changed the entire landscape for social interaction.
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What is the summary of language in thought and action?
Provocative and erudite, it examines the relationship between language and racial and religious prejudice; the nature and dangers of advertising from a linguistic point of view; and, in an additional chapter called “The Empty Eye,” the content, form, and hidden message of television, from situation comedies to news ...
What is the purpose of language in action?
The aim of this area of study is to allow students to explore and analyse language data independently and develop and reflect upon their own writing expertise. It requires students to carry out two different kinds of individual research: a language investigation [2,000 words excluding data]