LearnDay@Xoxzo is a monthly online seminar initiated by the Xoxzo team. We will have speakers from the team or guest speakers which will talk for 20 minutes each, on a subject of their choosing. "Language in thought and action" by Akira Nonoka, Xoxzo Engineer XOXZO Learn Day #24 2020/10/23 ====================== We have recorded sessions of our previous LearnDay here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiV-bQprArQxKBSzaKY1vQg For updates and news on our future LearnDays, follow us on Twitter (https://twitter.com/xoxzocom/) or sign up for our Exchange Newsletter (https://info.xoxzo.com/en/exchange-mailing-list/)

1. Language in Thought
and Action
By S. I. Hayakawa
X4 Learn day
Akira Nonaka
Oct. 23 2020

3. About this book
1. Book on general semantics.
2. First published 1949.
3. The 5th edition was published in 1991.
4. Sold over one million copies WW.
5. Translated into eight languages.

5. Samuel Ichiye Hayakawa
1. 1906 – 1992
2. Canadian-born American academic and political
figure.
3. He was an English professor, served as president of
San Francisco State University and then a United
States Senator from California from 1977 to 1983.
Z

6. Ch 1. Language and Survival
1. People who like to think of themselves as tough-minded
and realistic, tend to take it for granted that human
nature is "selfish" and that life is a struggle in which only
the fittest may survive.
2. We live in a highly competitive society, each of us trying
to outdo the other in wealth, in popularity or social
prestige, in dress, in scholastic grades or golf scores...
One is often tempted to say that conflict, rather than
cooperation, is the great governing principle of human
life.

7. Ch 1. Language and Survival
1. A human being, is never dependent on his own
experience alone for his information. Even in a
primitive culture he can make use of the experience
of his neighbors, friends, and relatives, which they
communicate to him by means of language.
2. Language makes progress possible.

8. Ch 1. Language and Survival
1. Despite all the competition at the surface, there is a
huge substratum of cooperation taken for granted that
keeps the world going...
2. Automobiles being manufactured, in cakes appearing in
pastry shops, in department stores being able to serve
their customers, in the trains and airlines running as
scheduled.
3. for the functioning of society is of necessity achieved by
language

9. Ch 1. Language and Survival
1. One is affected every hour of his life not only by the words he hears
and uses, but also by his unconscious assumptions about language.
2. Such unconscious assumptions determine the effect that words
have on him -- which in turn determines the way he acts, whether
wisely or foolishly.
3. Words -- the way he uses them and the way he takes them when
spoken by others -- largely shape his beliefs, his prejudices, his
ideals, his aspirations.
4. They constitute the moral and intellectual atmosphere in which he
lives -- in short, his semantic environment

10. Ch.2 Symbols
1. The process by means of which human beings can
arbitrarily make certain things stand for other things
may be called the symbolic process.
2. Of all forms of symbolism, language is the most
highly developed, most subtle, and most
complicated. It has been pointed out that human
beings, by agreement, can make anything stand for
anything.

11. The Word Is Not the Thing
1. People need to be systematically aware of the
powers and limitations of symbols, especially words,
if they are to guard against being driven into
complete bewilderment by the complexity of their
semantic environment.

12. The Word Is Not the Thing
1. The first of the principles governing symbols is this:
2. The symbol is NOT the thing symbolized.
3. The word is NOT the thing.
4. The map is NOT the territory it stands for.

13. A map is not the territory
1. The map–territory relation describes the relationship
between an object and a representation of that object, as
in the relation between a geographical territory and a map
of it. Polish-American scientist and philosopher Alfred
Korzybski remarked that "the map is not the territory" and
that "the word is not the thing", encapsulating his view
that an abstraction derived from something, or a reaction
to it, is not the thing itself. Korzybski held that many
people do confuse maps with territories, that is, confuse
models of reality with reality itself.

14. Summary
1. We want cooperation rather than conflict.
2. We need to communicate using language.
3. Sometimes communication is difficult.
4. This book is about the powers and limitations of the
language and how the language affects the thought
and action of the people.

15. Links
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Language_in_Thought_and_Action
• https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/
Language_in_Thought_and_Action
• https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/S._I._Hayakawa
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map–territory_relation