Chapter%20Four

1
Chapter Four

• An Early Communication Theory

2
General Semantics

• The map is not the territory.

3
General Semantics

• General Semantics is a theoretical perspective
  developed by Alfred Korzybski (Wikipedia).
• According to Alfred Korzybski himself, the
  central goal of General Semantics is to develop
  in its practitioners what he called
  consciousness of abstracting, that is an
  awareness of the map/territory distinction and of
  how much of reality is thrown away by the
  linguistic and other representations we use
  (Wikipedia).

4
General Semantics

• This group of theorists general semanticists
  embraced the goal of improving everyday
  communication by discovering the ways in which
  words distort, obscure, and complicate
  understanding between people. If they could
  discover the sources of misunderstanding, general
  semanticists thought, they could develop ways to
  avoid or correct them and thus improve
  communication (p. 76).

5
Symptoms/Signals vs. Signs/Symbols

• Signals, then, are naturally related to what
  they represent. Because of this natural
  relationship between signals and their referents,
  little effort is needed to understand signals
  their meanings are relatively clear, unvarying,
  and unambiguous (p. 76).

6
Symbols

• Symbols are arbitrary
• all symbols are conventions that members of a
  culture agree to use to represent other things.
  As such, they are arbitrary ways of representing
  reality, not necessarily or natural ones (p.
  77).
• Symbols are connected to referents only by
  indirect, agreed-on conventions of how to use
  words (p. 77).

7
Semantic Triangle
8
Symbols

• Symbols are arbitrary
• There is no natural, absolute connection between
  the symbol and the referent. The other two lines
  in the triangle, however, are unbroken. This
  reflects the direct linkage between our thoughts
  and both symbols and referents. Because
  humans tend to think in words and images, our
  thoughts (references) are directly connected to
  the words weve learned to use to describe
  phenomena (p. 77).

9
Symbols

• Symbols are abstract
• When we rely on symbols to refer to actual
  phenomena, we abstract or move away from those
  phenomena (p. 77).
• Because there are concrete referents for it, the
  word table is less abstract than words like love,
  honor, and dignity, which dont refer to tangible
  phenomena (p. 78).

10
Symbols

• Symbols are ambiguous
• Whereas signals have uniform and absolute
  meanings, the meaning of a symbol is not absolute
  and fixed (p. 78).

11
Meanings

• Meanings are in people, not in words.

12
Meanings

• Meaning varies based on context
• Context within a sentence
• Context within a particular situation

13
Meanings

• Meaning varies based on context
• Context also includes thoughts and feelings we
  have in a situation, history between
  communicators, the relationship in which
  communication occurs, and so forth. Context,
  then, is the entire field of experience that is
  related to communication. To complicate matters,
  each of us has a unique field of experience (p.
  79).

14
Meanings

• Meaning varies based on context
• Because no two individuals have precisely the
  same field of experience, its impossible for
  them to have exactly the same meanings for words
  (p. 79).

15
Meanings

• Question
• Would we be better off if we could develop a
  language that was concrete, clear, and based on
  natural ties between referents and symbols? (p.
  79).

16
Meanings

• Question
• Can symbols ever be really accurate?
• What impact does this have on issues of ethical
  communication?

17
Miscommunication

• The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (the empty gas can).
• The skinny shake (Stacks, Hill, Hickson,
  1991).
• David Howard and the word niggardly

18
Solutions

• Recognizing and accounting for the distinction
  between intensional and extentional orientations.
• Intentional orientations to communication and
  meaning are based on internal factors, or whats
  inside of us our own definitions, associations,
  and fields of experience related to words we
  speak, hear, and read (p. 80).
• Extentional orientations, in contrast, are based
  on observation and attention to objective
  particulars that distinguish phenomena from one
  another (p. 80).

19
Solutions

• Et Cetera acknowledging the inevitable
  incompleteness of language in terms of its
  capacity to express meaning.
• Indexing Indexing is a way to remind ourselves
  that meanings vary and change across time and
  circumstances (p. 83).

20
Solutions

• Feedforward
• General semanticists coined the term feedforward
  to describe the process of anticipating the
  effects of communication and adapting to these
  anticipated effects in advance of actually
  communicating with others (p. 84).
• Feedforward, in other words, is anticipatory
  feedback (p. 84).

21
Criticisms

• Does language represent a previously existing
  reality or does language create reality?
• How can the ideas of general semantics be applied?