PORT RESU.MES

ED 020 170 TE. ODD 447 WILL SEMANTICS HELP. BY- CORBIN, RICHARD PUB DATE MAR 54 EDRS PRICE MF.40.25 HC -$0.36 7P.

DESCRIPTORS- *COMMUNICATION PROBLEMS, *ENGLISH INSTRUCTION, *LANGUAGE ROLE, *SEMANTICS, *SYMBOLIC LANGUAGE SECONDARY SCHOOL TEACHERS, ENGLISH, LANGUAGE USAGE, SEMIOTICS, LANGUAGE, COMMUNICATION (THOUGHT TRANSFER),

DEFENDENCE UPON SYMBOLS HAS LONG BEEN THE MARK OF CIVILIZED MAN. ALTHOUGH THE MAJORITY OF US HAVE LITTLE -TROUBLE IDENTIFYING AND EVALUATING THE REFERENTS OF PHYSICAL SYMBOLS, WE ARE LESS.SURE WHEN DEALING WITH THE MORE SUBTLE TYPE OF SYMBOLS CALLED WORDS. WE KNOW THAT A ,WORWS MEANING MAY'VARY ACCORDING TO SPEAKER, WRITER,. LISTENER, READER,. OR SITUATION, BUT FEW OF US-WERE TRAINED TO DETECT FACT. FROM _FICTION AND TO ADVISE OTHERS ABOUT THIS DISTINCTION. -NEVERTHELESS, WE, AS ENGLISH TEACHERS, MUSTBE OUR STUDENTS'. INTERPRETERS OF THE THAT WORDS STAND FOR, AND, THEREFORE, TEACHING. ONLY GRAMMAR AND RHETORIC IS' INSUFFICIENT. -SINCE TOMORROW'S CRITICS ARE IN OUR CLASSROOMS TODAY, LET US ,TEACH THEM:ABOUT SEMANTICS AND THE--SYMBOLIC.. 'PROCESS, AND SO.PROVIDE THEM WITH .THE LINGUISTIC INSIGHT TO 4ANDLETHE.PROBLEMS- COMMON TO ALL MEDIA. (THIS - ARTICLE -APPEARED-IN THE "ENGLISH JOURNAL,". VOL. 43' (MARCH 1954)4 .1.307341. 46.) (MM) ors.% no .?:(;.!reitl,,,t rZA , ,Thrn'N r,-trvir -,e'.7.7"0"-F,':*'1,- - "ft: ,-19mr0;

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Los Angeles

Convention

Addresses

A Presidential Message. . Igill111111.1111.1111milimminimmurnammilmaimpulimumeriammiamirs.. .

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, EDUCATION & WELFARE

OFFICE OF EDUCATION

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Will SemanticsHelp?

RICHARD CORBXN2 "it means just what Ichoose it to "When I use a word," saidHumpty Dumpty [to Alice], meanneither more nor less." preparing this "would-be"Humpty The other day, while How many advertising man Dumpties are there in.this audience? Italk, I asked a friend, an "would-be," because I assumethatwith our local newspaperand a person I say well informed, all of us like to believein the comfortinghad always considered "say what wewhat help, if any,semantics has been to illusion that we always rather what we say." Of course,him in his work. His response was mean and mean Oh, yes, se- sooner orlater, by one means oranother,disconcerting: "Semantics? of this illusionmantics. Something to dowith the Jews, the treacherous character good part of my is brought home to mostof us, and with ahasn't it?" Ironically, a friend's work each day is in animportant properhumility we confess ourverbal admit that very rarelyarea ofsemantic inquirythe effectof sins. We have to human do our words meanall that we intendwords and their meanings upon them to mean, and, onthe other hand,behavior, and vice versa. times our words carry At the outsei., let meoffer a friendly that a great many who recognize in tremendously moremeaning than wewarning to any of you yourselves anantisemanticnot anti- realize or want them to. manifest in Naturally, we teachersof English,Semiticbias such as was is the study ofHumpty Dumpty. Forit is rumored in whose special province for the TV Age words and theireccentric ways, neverthe Revised Mother Goose victimize our think-that Humpty did not fall, asreported in allow this illusion to fact deliber- ingor do we? That morethan a few ofearlier editions, but was in do is rather curious,consid-ately shoved from hiswall. The chief sus- us obviously the unofficial files of ering the notable storeof informationpect, according to words and meaningthe Los Angeles PoliceDepartment, is a about the nature of resented certain that is ours for thestudythough it mustpsychotic symbol that this information iscontextual abuses heaped uponit by the be admitted that reconstructing the rather well shieldedfrom the eye of thevictim. Investigators, casual seeker bythe ominous labelcrime, theorize that in a fitof passion the "Semantics" or, even worse,"Semasi-as yetunidentified symbol, gaining ac- -cess to thewall by offering a forged ology." referent, tumbled theunsuspecting vic- A talk delivered beforethe meeting of the High eminence, then lost National Council of Teacherstim from his worldy School Section of the itself in the passing streamof argot. of English, Los Angeles,November 28, 1953. You are advised,therefore, if you spot Chairman,Englishdepartment,Peekskill (N.Y.) Public Schoolsrvice-president representinga word withsuspicious tendencies to re- secondary schools, NewYork State English Council;port it immediately to"Bromicide," and representing the High School NCTE director it will be placed under closesurveillance Section. WILL SEMANTICS HELP? 131 by the "Current English Forum." This isCamelot and pine for the good old days your simple duty as members of thewhen teaching English was a relatively NCTE. Obviously, we cannot hope tosimple matter: spelling on Mondays, maintain the even tenor of our ways asSilas Marner on Tuesdays and Thurs- teachers of English if criminally inten-days, grammar on Wednesdays, and per- tioned words run loosely about withhaps oral English on Fridays. And some multiple meanings andquestionableof us, possibly, in. Cheevian frustration, referents, tumbling our more prominentscratch our heads and keep on thinking, Humpty Dumpties on their heads. and a few cough and call it fateand But these are but wild and whirlingkeep on drinking. words, my lords. If there is a message Dependence upon symbols has been hiding in this initial nonsense, which Ithe mark of civilized man through the doubt, it is supposed to be this: that acenturies. We have come to intrust our great many of us get ourselves and othersfortunes and our lives often to incompre into a great deal of trouble because wehensibly complex symbols. Our govern- don't understand how our words and ourments, our economic, moral, and social minds operate in communicatingorders, would collapse without them. Not thought. We teachers of English spend aallthese symbols,ofcourse, point good deal of our time polishing the spell-heavenward. Many are false and danger- ing, the pronunciation, the syntax, of ourous symbols, intended to lure us back- boys and girls. Do we devote a compa-ward and down: the swastika, the. Red rable effort to the more essential businessStar, the gold-plated football. Fortunate- of showing them how language works? Ifly, the majority of us have little trouble their speech and writing are mechanical-spotting and sensibly evaluating the ly flawless, are we likely to take time toreferents of i-I :.ese and many more of the remark the prejudice, the single-valuedglamorous physical symbols that sur- judgment, the glittering generality, theround us. runaway abstraction, the twisted meta- We are not so sure of ourselves, phor, that underlie the polished surface?though, when we have to deal with the We show no concern with these mat-more subtle type of symbols called ters,partly,Isuspect, because we"words." It is clear to the most casual haven't the time in our overloadedobserver that the mea,nir ; attached to classes to stir up new and demandingthe word "McCarthy" by one good citi- problems. ,But the real reason goes deeperzen may not square at all with the mean- than that. Most of us have not, ourselves,ing attached to it by another. The teach- been trained to detect and to offer helpfuler who speaks so knowingly of "success" advice to others about the repair of faul-to her thirty pupils will, if she investi- ty thinking. Thus we are not entirely togates, discover thirty different meanings blame if we send out into the world stu-of the word, and none identical with her dents who cannot distinguish fact fromown. Millions of Americans are startled fiction, the Truth from the Big Lie. Into read in their morning papers of a well- our training as teachers of English, weintentioned lady in. Indiana who finds were given many of the tools of our craftnew and ugly depths of meaning in the but not, unfortunately, the special toolromantic old symbol "Robin Hood." needed for this pre-eminently importantMost of the same readers are not at at job. So, many of us dream of Thebes anddisturbed to find on an adjoining page a l32 THE ENGLISH 7OURN,IL warning from another citizen that we Only yesterday, it seems, we spoke in Americans may have to discard our sym-sepulchraltonesofthe problem of bol "democracy" and invent another for"teaching English for the Atomic Age." its place, since the Communists have soHas the time now come to file away in successfully twisted its meaning for theour commodious pedagogical archives peoples who graze hungrily outside thethe conscience-searing units on Hiro- democratic fold. shima and related chaos that have occu- Unless we understand, and teach ourpied us for the last eight years? How children to understand, the process bymany worn and torn curriculum com- which men's minds create symbols andmittees have labored faithfully in the then in turn are shaped by them, we willwaning light of how many afternoons have to continue the uneven struggletrying to keep up with the popular de- against the awful power of the misusedmand for units and syllabi and state- word. If the world of words is sinkingments of aims appropriate to each new fast into a condition of anarchy, as someephemeral slogan or label? Now again, it suggest, or into a state of tyranny, asseems, Clio has audited her accounts. In others say, it will certainly not be savedher files the "Atomic Age" has joined the by the teaching of grammar and rhetoric"Return to Spiritual Values," "One alone. Indeed, some of the biggest lies ofWorld,"the"Fascist Threat," and recent history have been grammaticallyothers almost forgot. At the top of a faultless and rhetorically brilliant. I donew page of her ledger she has printed in not speak against the importance ofround bold letters "The TV Age." grammar and rhetoric when I, suggest Naturally, English curriculums that that it is urgent for us teachers of Englishdid their share in helping us to regain to equip our boys and girls with an un-((normalcy" in the 1930's;to sell bonds, derstanding of the semantics of language.collect scrap, and defeat our enemies in In this fateful final half of the twentieththe early 1940's;5.0 make our people century, we must be more than teachersworld-minded in the late 1940's; and, of words; we must be interpreters of themore recently, to help our students to world they stand for. learn to live in an atom-conscious world But I am getting a long way from myand like itnaturally, these varied pro- subject. What has all this to do withgrams are not now adequate to meet the television? For my topic, according tolatest assault upon our national peace of the program in your hands, is the gues-mind, an assault led by cadres of grimac- s tion "Will Semantics Help in the Teach-ing lady wresters, grinning hearts-of-gold ing of English at the Beginning of thehucksters, and deadpan detectives, sup- TV Age?" Frankly, I approach this sub-ported by shock units of marching, cho- ject with a strange uneasiness. The "TVrusing cigarettes and waltzing, talking Age"! Is this epithet more appropriatebeer cans. Symbols of the proposed new than any other for our times? Will his-age? torians of the future find it more truly What I am trying to implywith too descriptive of this decade than, say, theheavy a note of irony, probablyis my label "Antibiotic Age"? the "Age of thereluctance to accept a new label or slogan Uneasy Truce"? the "Age of StaListics"?in my teaching every time the wind' or even the "Age of Public Schoolveers. That labels are useful in historical Quackery"? description is clear. That slogans are dear WILL SEMANTICS HELP? to the human heart and that we mustmost important principlesthe fact that therefore learn to live with them is alsomeaning is dynamic and changing, a clear. But it is one thing to live withproduct of the user's particular experi- words and to shape them to our ends, andence with the thing a word stands for. quite another to let them shape us. ItHow much more comfortable our lives seems to me time for teachers of English,weald be, as teachers, if some of our of all teac.hers, to stop tailoring pro-critics who hurl the word "fundamen- grams to fit labels and slogans and totals" at us with such self-assurance could look earnestly, instead, for some of theshare our knowledge of this principle. It common denominators of language inseems superfluous to moralize that in our thought and action, to search for someclassrooms now we are readying our to- common denominators (and I don't nec-morrow's critics. By all means let us essarily mean `lowest common denomi-train them to be critics, but let's make of nators") that will help our boys and girlsthem critic: who appreciate the weight to solve not one but a succession of theirand worth of words. and the world's problems. When a forest becomes too thickly What are these common denomina-planted, most of the trees become stunted tors, or "fundamentals," if you are notand uncertain in their growth. I suggest averse to grabbing the bull by the horns?what many others already have: that the Do any of us question the value of funda-English program is becominghas be- mentals in gaining mastery of any sub-comeovergrown. We have accepted ject, including the mastery of English?more and more responsibilities, like the Here, perhaps, is the place for a briefgood Joes we are (you know, more good- demonstration of a semantic principle.natured and adaptable than the math or Let us assume that we all agree thatscience or "education for citizenship" fundamentals are essential. But now sup-that's a new semantic switch for "social pose we were each to turn to his seatmatestudies" in. New York Stateteachers and discuss for the next hour what wewith their strait-jacket syllabi O. Any mean specifically by the "fundamentalsitem coming down the educational turn- of English." Is there any need to theorizepike that bears the slightest resemblance about the probable results? You haveto communication or literature is shunt- been through it already, most of you,ed our way. I suggest that we teachers of. hundreds of times in frustrating facultyEnglish get a little tougher-minded and and currkulum-planning meetings. Werefuse to accept so benignly some of, these can agree absolutely on the need fororphans of the curriculum. Television, teaching fundamentals, but how many offor instance, is not our special problem. our faculties ever honestly reach agree-We do not need to teach our pupils to ment on what they mean by that? Thuslook at television, to listen to radio, to we teachers have come to treat the wordlook at motion pictures, or to receive "fundamentals" with a circumspectionsense impressions from any other of the that the laymanwho knows with cer-mediums of mass communication. tainty what it meansseldom accords it We will use these devices in our English So, you see, without even being formallyclasses, naturally, as helpful means to an introduced to the study of semantics, youend. But our main job respecting any or have perhaps arrived through experienceall of them, it seems to me, is to teach our at a partali apprec of one of itsboys and girls about words and meaning 134 THE ENGLISH 7OURNi1L, about the symbolic process, the com-words they used. At least they have mon denominator of allmediums of com-never been notably disturbed until our munication. If we do this halfway effec-own time. Now, suddenly, all kinds of tively, we need have less concern aboutmen in every part of the world have be- the judgment they will show in arrivingcome concerned, in varying degrees, with at understanding and appreciation inthe nature and workings of language television or any other medium. A basicsome from evil motives, some from mer- tool that we can furnish and that willcenary motives, but many from a more serve them well is, I suggest, aknowledgehonorable motive, the desire to commu- of semantics. nicate what is in their hearts to those Semantics can hardly be regarded as awho have never known democratic free- new field of inquiry.Twenty-five cen-dom, either of word or of thought. turies ago, Lao-tzu began The Way of Wherever you turn today you are like- Life with this statement, that might wellly to find men giving semantics their re- have issued from almost any of our mod-spectful attention. Leading businessmen, ern professional semanticists: doctors, lawyers,dentists, diplomats, writers, ex-Presidentsthey are all con- In the beginning of heaven and earth there werecerned, as evidenced by the numerous no words, articles in their journals and by their Words came out of the womb of matter; And whether a man dispassionately public utterances, with the impact of Sees to the core of life words upon theiraffairs.Strangely, Or passionately among teachers we find a curiousdisin- Sees the surface, terest, a reluctance to rank the study of The core and the surface meaning above the study of the inflec- Are essentially the same, tional vagaries of English words. Words making them seem different Only to express appearance. Of all the insights that Carl Sandburg If name be needed, wonder names them both.has given me into the epic character of Lincoln, none has so deepened my under- Wonder had not yet created the term,standing of the genius of the man as the but, as you can see, Lao-tzu can be re-brief chapter x of the Prairie Years that garded as a pioneer semanticist. That is,sets forth so vividly the nature of the he was concerned with the nature of thelanguage used on the Illinois, or any, meanings of wordsbut as a philoso-frontier and that ends: pher, not as a scientist. In every century Words like "independent" bothered the boy. since, great thinkers have continued toHe was hungry to understand the meanings of explore the nature of words. To most ofwords. He would ask what "independent" them it has seemed clear that of all themeant and when he was told the meaning he lay awake nights thinking about the meaning of the tools provided man for survival and ulti-meaning of "independent." Other words both- mately for victory over his hostile envi-ered him, such as "predestination." He asked ronment, languagethe symbolizationthe meaning of that and lay awake hours at of experienceis the most essential, andnight thinking about the meaning of the mean- the ledst understood. ing. In spite of the perennial interest of the From Lao-tzu to Lincoln to the boys world's great minds in this subject, ordi-and girls in your third-period English nary men have neverbeen greatly dis- turbed by the hidden workings of the (Concluded on. p. 1461

' " 21 WILLSEMANTICS HELP?[Continued from p. 134] class (even if they happen to be selectedteaching of our youth. If we must choose slow learners) there is an instinctive hu-and set up a slogan to help us chart our man appetite for meaning and for theway, it seems to me that for the last meaning of meanings. Since the scientifictwenty years and for many years to linguists of the past few decades havecome, above all else we have been and provided us :with manyeasy approacheswill be living in an "Age of Mass Com- to the study of semantics, we teachers ofmunication," of which television is but a language will have no ready alibi ifwesingle medium. Our job is to provide fail to translate their findings into work-young people with the linguistic insights able teaching material. they will need to handle the problems If I have seemed, Humpty Dumptycommon to all existing mediums and like, to evade the programed issue byothers not yet discovered in such a way making my topic mean just what I chosethat individual freedom of word, thought, it to mean, it was,as perhaps you haveand action will not disappear from the sensed, because I do not view theso-earth, either by 1984 or by any otheryear called "TV Age" with special apprehen-of history yet to come. sion. Television is a hard and present Several of .our poets in times past have fact; but so are the New York Dailynoted, "The pen is mightier than the News, Hollywood Class B pictures, crimesword." It remains for us, with our scien- comics, low-grade pocket books, and thetific know-how, to prove that words hon- "Voice of Moscow." Somehowwe haveestly and intelligently used aremore ef- to deal effectively with them all in thefective than atomic missiles.

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