ETC.: A Review of General Semantics articles from September 1997

ETC.: A Review of General Semantics archives from September 1997

Language boundaries and discourse stability: 'tagging' as a form of graffiti spanning international borders.
September 22, 1997... The "thou" is older than the "I." - Friedrich Nietzsche There is nowhere anything lasting, neither outside me, nor within me, but only incessant change. I nowhere know of any being, not even my own. There is no being. I "myself" know nothing...

When I say 'preposition,' what do you think of?
September 22, 1997... Did you notice that the title of this article ends in a preposition? Does that bother you? My inspiration for this piece comes from "John Smith" (this point of disagreement does not warrant publishing his name), a brilliant, articulate radio...

To exercise the verbals.
September 22, 1997... Among the many projects pursued by writers of "modernist" tendencies, from Zola and Joyce to today's Richard Ford and Nicholson Baker, we can discern a few tasks as primary. These include the authentic rendition of the flow of experience and the...

"It ain't necessarily so."
September 22, 1997... One of the bad language habits we can fall into is that we sometimes believe something is so just because we say it is so. To put it another way, we use words to declare something to be the "truth." It's got to be what we say it is! And,...

Foundations of a theory of decision making.
September 22, 1997... Introduction I delivered the piece below on June 22, 1951, at the opening session of the University of Chicago conference on general semantics cosponsored by the International Society for General Semantics. Francis P. Chisholm, author of...

The semantics of death and dying: metaphor and mortality.
September 22, 1997... In his The Encheiridion or "Handbook," stoic philosopher Epictetus speaks repeatedly of the importance of keeping death and dying in one's consciousness. Being aware of the reality of death is emphasized by Epictetus, who suggests that the...

Metaphors by the seashore.
September 22, 1997... A vacation at the seashore is a time to relax, unwind, and maybe get a new slant on life. On two recent stays at the shore, I found myself reflecting on metaphor in new ways: once when contemplating the bridges of the Chesapeake Bay, and once...

General semantics is not "about" general semantics.
September 22, 1997... Often students of general semantics get bogged down by the high order abstractions of its principles and formulations; they become quite skilled in the grammar, logic, and semantics of general semantics, and pay scant attention to the pragmatics...

Pain management.
September 22, 1997... The phone rang Friday afternoon, October 28th, 1983. It rang again Thursday morning, February 20, 1997. The first call came from a neighbor's daughter and brought news about firemen battling a fire at my home. The second call came from a police...

A general semantics glossary. (part 19)
September 22, 1997... If he contend, as sometimes he will contend, that he has defined all his terms and proved all his propositions, then either he is a performer of logical miracles or he is an ass; and, as you know, logical miracles are impossible. Cassius...

Do It Right the First Time: A Short Guide to Learning from Your Most Memorable Errors, Mistakes and Blunders.
September 22, 1997... Gerard I. Nierenberg, whom Forbes magazine has called "The Father of Negotiating Training," is the author of over 20 books and a well-known popularizer of general semantics. In his latest book he shows us how we can reduce the number of errors we...

Science on Trial: The Clash of Medical Evidence and the Law in the Breast Implant Case.
September 22, 1997... In 1992 the FDA banned silicone-gel-filled breast implants from the market because they had not been proven safe. Many rejoiced including advocates of tough government regulations, women who believed breast implants caused them to be sick, and...

Woe is I: The Grammarphobe's Guide to Better English in Plain English.
September 22, 1997... Patricia T. O'Conner, an editor at The New York Times Book Review, tells us English is not easy, as languages go. It originated 1500 years ago when Germanic tribes (mainly Angles and Saxons) invaded Britain, a Celtic-speaking land already...

Harvesting Minds: How TV Commercials Control Kids.
September 22, 1997... George Gerbner, of the Annenberg School of Communication, writes in the foreword to this book, "What happens when the historically protected and increasingly valuable sphere of the public classroom is invaded by the very images and messages that...

Turning Stones: My Days and Nights With Children at Risk.
September 22, 1997... Marc Parent worked for New York City's Emergency Children's Services from 1986-91. His job was to respond to reports of suspected child abuse and make night visits to determine whether or not to remove a child at-risk and arrange for temporary...

Hamilton's Blessing: The Extraordinary Life and Times of Our National Debt.
September 22, 1997... Charles Dickens in David Copperfield wrote, "Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery." Alexander Hamilton,...

The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order.
September 22, 1997... In the summer of 1993, an article by Samuel P. Huntington in Foreign Affairs entitled "The Clash of Civilizations?" posed the question of whether conflicts between civilizations would dominate the future of world politics. That article garnered...

Edison: Inventing the Century.
September 22, 1997... He invented the phonograph, light bulb, motion picture camera, and registered 1,093 patents. He was to the telegraph technology of his day what Bill Gates is to computers today. He married twice and neglected his six children. He was the Wizard...