| Language in Thought and Action | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) | S. I. Hayakawa |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | semantics |
| Publisher | Harcourt |
| Publication date | 1949 |
| Media type | Hardcover, Paperback, Audio Cassette |
| Pages | 196 pp (5th edition paperback) |
| ISBN | 978-0156482400 |
| OCLC Number | 23137765 |
| Dewey Decimal | 420/.143 20 |
| LC Classification | PE1585 .H36 1990b |
Language in Thought and Action is a book on semantics by Samuel Ichiye Hayakawa, based on his previous work Language in Action published in 1939. Early editions were written in consultation with different people. The current 5th edition was published in 1991. It was updated by Hayakawa's son, Alan R. Hayakawa and has an introduction by Robert MacNeil. Its Library of Congress control number is 92033105. The book has sold over one million copies and has been translated into eight languages.
| “ | Insight into human symbolic behavior and into human interaction through symbolic mechanisms comes from all sorts of disciplines: not only from linguistics, philosophy, psychology, and cultural anthropology, but from attitude research and public opinion study, from new techniques in psychotherapy, from physiology and neurology, from mathematical biology and cybernetics. How are all these separate insights to be brought together? ...I have examined the problem long enough to believe that it cannot be done without some set of broad and informing principles such as is to be found in the General Semantics of Alfred Korzybski. | ” |
This book contains an in-depth treatise of thought-terminating phrases, other manipulative secrets of semantics, and an extensive bibliography.