Chapter Four

An Early Communication Theory

General Semantics

“The map is not the territory.”

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).

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).

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).

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).

Semantic Triangle

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 we’ve learned to use to describe phenomena” (p. 77).

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 don’t refer to tangible phenomena” (p. 78).

Symbols

• Symbols are ambiguous

– “Whereas signals have uniform and absolute meanings, the meaning of a symbol is not absolute and fixed” (p. 78).

Meanings

“Meanings are in people, not in words.”

Meanings

• Meaning varies based on context

– Context within a sentence

– Context within a particular situation

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).

Meanings

• Meaning varies based on context

– “Because no two individuals have precisely the same field of experience, it’s impossible for them to have exactly the same meanings for words” (p. 79).

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).

Meanings

• Question

– “Can symbols ever be really accurate?”

– “What impact does this have on issues of ethical communication?”

Miscommunication

• The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (the “empty” gas can).

• The “skinny shake” (Stacks, Hill, & Hickson, 1991).

• David Howard and the word “niggardly”

Solutions

• Recognizing and accounting for the distinction between intensional and extentional orientations.– “Intentional orientations to communication and

meaning are based on internal factors, or what’s 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).

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).

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).

Criticisms

• Does language represent a previously existing reality or does language create reality?

• How can the ideas of general semantics be applied?