ETC.: A Review of General Semantics articles from September 1993

ETC.: A Review of General Semantics archives from September 1993

Tagging: changing visual patterns and the rhetorical implications of a new form of graffiti.
September 22, 1993... "...words of the prophets...written on the subway walls." ACCORDING TO Michel Foucault, written language pictures mental images, thus capturing the otherwise fleeting experience known as spoken language. In other words, written language...

The great Eskimo vocabulary hoax.
September 22, 1993... EVEN THOUGH I fall outside its usual academic target-audience, I said yes to Lingua Franca's 1990 subscription offer, because it got to me personally. The offer featured an article, "The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax," purporting to debunk a...

Defining the abortion debate.
September 22, 1993... MY FRIEND LEXI once said that when she looks at newborn babies she sees the "wisdom of the ages" in their eyes. I did not see this "wisdom" then and, now that I have my own little girl, I still don't. But I do understand why Lexi and I are...

Staying out of hog water: tips for writers.
September 22, 1993... UNLESS MUDDIED UP, English can be a lovely and complex language, capable of expressing almost any nuance of thought or emotion. Perhaps becauseh it allows such precision of expression, it has overtaken French as the language of international...

Using general semantics principles in the basic news reporting classroom.
September 22, 1993... BASIC NEWS REPORTING CLASSES offer us an excellent opportunity to alert future journalists to important aspects of human perception such as those studied in the field of general semantics. Reporting required identifying and discovering...

Media and culture.
September 22, 1993... WHAT HAPPENS WHEN a new technology is introduced into a culture? According to such writers as Harold Innis, Marshall McLuhan, Neil Postman, and others, graphic, filmic, and electornic media create different kinds of communications...

Do away with "to be" - there, pupils, lies the answer. (E - Prime Symposium II.)
September 22, 1993... DOES THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE really need the verb to be or does its use involve more liabilities than benefits? For the past several hundred years, philosophers, scholars, and English teachers have warned against the abuse of the verb (basically...

E-Prime and E-Plus.
September 22, 1993... E-PRIME AROSE as a bold stratagem, a straightforward attack on a pervasive problem of English -- the way the ubiquitous verb "to be" tempts us into identities. Korzybski tells us we shoud avoid identities at 'all' costs, and E-Prime...

An auto-interview on the need for E-Prime.
September 22, 1993... Q. THIS STRIKES ME as a bit of a conceit. Why do you insist on interviewing yourself -- do you fear, from other interviewers, embarrassing questions, questions revealing lack of knowledge, unclear thinking or other symptoms of incompetence to...

The prime problem with general semantics.
September 22, 1993... THE SUMMER 1992 issue of ETC., contains my article, "The Top Ten Arguments Against E-Prime."(1) David Bourland criticized the article (and other essays leery of the E-Prime movement) in that sme issue.(2) This essay constitutes my response. ...

Comments on a public speaking text in E-Prime.
September 22, 1993... AFTER SOME ENCOURAGEMENT from a publisher, I wrote a public speaking textbook titled Plain Public Speaking. I tried to write the book as a concise text containing simple directions on how to make speeches -- a manual that any college freshman...

One grunt or two?
September 22, 1993... MY NAME IS ALFRED. This sentence, besides giving my name, demonstrates what we used to call an "is of identity" construction, which early believers in E' thought was the most deadly use of the verb "to be." You who someday read these words...

E-Prime, E-Choice, E-Chosen.
September 22, 1993... E-PRIME OR E-CHOICE "is" a choice. I could have written "appears as a choice" but that would have detracted from my point. A point isomorphic with Emory Menefee's argument ("E-Prime or E-Choice," ETC., Summer 1991) that not all...

Talking to the wall.
September 22, 1993... IT WOULD SEEM that certain upholders of the faith have deemed it necessary to protect us from the insidious influence of a new trend which threat ens to undermine the very core of civilized life. I refer, of course, to that heinous, noxious,...

Is-Y white hats and is-Y black hats. (E-prime symposium II)
September 22, 1993... IN RECENT ISSUES OF ETC., we've been treated to arguments for E-Prime and to arguments for E-Choice. In presenting my two-cents worth, I shall abandon the faintly carnivorous metaphor and switch into the hollywood Western mode: good guys wear...

A Review of to be or Not: An E-Prime Anthology.
September 22, 1993... As TECHNICAL WRITERS, we continually strive for clarity. An accurate explanation of how a software program functions enables the user to employ it more effectively. We try to show the user what it does by using descriptive verbs; in this...

Letter of comment. (response to article, ETC: A Review of General Semantics, Fall 1991) (Letter to the Editor)
September 22, 1993... DEAR SEMANTICIANS: I claim no particular expertise in your field, and have not even read To Be Or Not, but I recognize a fish when I smell one, and smell one I did upon reading the correspondence concerning E-Prime in your fall 1991 issue....

Semantics. (poem)
September 22, 1993... SEMANTICS Semantics Helps us understand people's antics It lays some secrets bare It makes us more aware For sure! Inferring Can often result in a blurring So, cautious we must be Distilling carefully What's pure! Ah, Ruth dear, We've had...

Letter to D. David Bourland, Jr. (response to articles in ETC, Special issue, Summer 1992) (Letter to the Editor)
September 22, 1993... The Special Issue of ETC. on E-Prime [ETC., Summer 1992] has generated much correspondence that I have seen, and I hate to think of how much that I have not seen. After carefully studying the published articles and these letters I would...

Too far?
September 22, 1993... 1. Introduction IN THE LIST of my peak intellectual life experiences I would surely have to include the following three: (i) During Korzybski's last summer seminar (August, 1949), at Great Barington, Mass., and at this last winter...

Has metaphor collapsed?
September 22, 1993... IT ALL STARTED when I was reading America, by Jean Baudrillard. The French philosopher had been traveling through the United States, waxing poetic on his favorite subjects of media, simulations, and the automobile and its culture which he...

The mighty pen.
September 22, 1993... IT PROBABLY CAME FROM the school bookstore. Except for some teeth marks around the top, it exhibited few distinguishing characteristics. I held my blue ball point pen aloft and asked my class. "What do you call this thing?" Having assimilated...

Putting the me in media conference coverage.
September 22, 1993... GENERAL SEMANTICS can be used as a tool to understand media messages. If a person better understands those messages, he or she can become a more active, critical consumer of media. When a media consumer becomes a more active, critical...

Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr.: Called to Serve January 1929-June 1951, vol. 1.
September 22, 1993... This first volume of the papers of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. begins with a 1937 Father's Day greeting authored by eight year old martin and Wille C. King and Alfred Daniel Williams King. The volume concludes with a June 4, 1951 letter sent...

Bridging Differences: Effective Intergroup Communication.
September 22, 1993... In an age when "multiculturalism" has become a "god term," Gudykunst has authored a highly readable, theoretically grounded, and practical guide for helping us understand and communicate with "strangers" -- or "poeple who are not members of our...

The Mode of Information: Poststructuralism and Social Context.
September 22, 1993... Marx, Weber, Diderot, Habermas, Baudrillard, Lear, Althusser, Barthes, Foucault, Derrida, and Lyotard are some of the thinkers discussed in this theoretical text. Their concepts and methodologies are used by Poster as he asks how electronic...

The Rhetorical Turn: Invention and Persuasion in the Conduct of Inquiry.
September 22, 1993... This collection of eassys surveys the philosophical intricacies and epistemological implications of contemporary thinking about rhetoric. Coming out of the 1986 Temple University conference on the rhetoric of human sciences, the contributors...

Super Media: A Cultural Studies Approach.
September 22, 1993... The question which focuses this text is "What kind of culture are we creating?" For Michael Real, super media are "technologically relayed communications" (20) which "create, express, and reflect culture." (36) Likewise, they contribute to...