‘<\/span><\/div>General semantics is the study of thinking and its effects on language, behavior, and culture.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\nBut!<\/p>\n
Language can be thought of as behavior<\/em>, and in fact, in general semantics, it often is.\u00a0 Language can also be thought of as culture.\u00a0 So is mentioning language in this definition TMI (“too much information”)?\u00a0 Does its mention potentially throw the audience of this definition?\u00a0 Does it make the\u00a0blinking layperson\u00a0say, “Why care about language?”<\/p>\nIt struck me tonight that maybe making mention of language in a definition of general semantics over<\/em>emphasizes what is more of an afterthought in general semantics.<\/p>\nWhile I’m not totally sure I’m behind the characterization that follows, I think there’s something to be said about it: An overemphasis on language came with the release of the Second Edition of Alfred Korzybski’s Science and Sanity<\/em>, when he spoke in the introduction to that edition of the extensional devices.\u00a0 Suddenly, with the extenional devices\u00a0we were really, really paying attention to language.\u00a0 I mean, presumably Korzybski’s readers were already paying attention to language before the second edition, especially considering some of his diagrams (labels in the Structural Differential) and terminology (“multiordinal terms,” e.g.).\u00a0 But the target more, it seems to me of late, was thinking<\/em>.\u00a0 Changing our language was one<\/em> way to effect thinking, and effecting thinking was the higher aim,\u00a0but\u00a0changing our language was just\u00a0one weapon in the arsenal aimed at effecting thinking.<\/p>\nOn another note\u00a0with respect to the most recent definition of general semantics, the use of the word “culture” in the definition seemed to miss the mark a bit for me the more I thought about it.\u00a0 I mean, Korzybski had an interest in influencing the culture, but he had a much greater ambition as seen in his book Manhood of Humanity<\/em>.\u00a0 He wanted to influence humanity<\/em>.\u00a0 The word “humanity” strikes me as something greater than what the word “culture” represents.\u00a0 So why not add it into the definition while taking out the word “language”?<\/p>\nSo I did.\u00a0 And here’s today’s newly evolved definition for general semantics:<\/p>\n
‘<\/span><\/div>General semantics is the study of thinking and its effects on behavior, culture, and humanity.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\nI like this a lot better.\u00a0 By subtracting “language” from the equation, general semantics seems a bit less pedantic and fussy.\u00a0\u00a0 By adding “humanity” to the equation, general semantics has a highly ambitious and forever-motivating goal: impacting humanity<\/em>, not just behavior or culture.<\/p>\nIt’s a rather powerful definition, in my opinion.\u00a0 It hits on the individual\/personal level (behavior), the community level (culture), and the species level (humanity).\u00a0 It fesses up that there is the belief that how humans think can have effects on each of these levels, and it implies that changing thinking to different kinds of thinking can have different effects on each of these levels.\u00a0 And it’s nice in listing\u00a03 different realms of interest (as opposed to 2 or 4 or more).\u00a0 Language would be discussed under the topic of behavior, probably.\u00a0 It’s not excluded from the discussion by not being in the definition.<\/p>\n
I think I’m going to sleep on this definition and, if it sits well with me, see what I can do toward getting it on the front page for the Institute of General Semantics website.<\/p>\n
And if you have feedback, please share it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In the saga of evolving an easy, representative answer to the passing question a friend might ask, “What’s general semantics?,” I actually took a turn toward deemphasizing language totally in my answer. My most recent definition of general semantics, mentioned in a recent post, was: ‘General semantics is the study of thinking and its effects […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[9,6],"class_list":["post-246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-semantics","tag-definition","tag-marketing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":263,"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246\/revisions\/263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}