COMT 175: How People Mean: Understanding Language in order to Communicate
Clearly and Think Effectively
Greg Thompson (email: g1thompson@ucsd.edu)
Spring 2011 – Tuesday/Thursday 2:00-3:20 – CENTR 205
This course explores one of the fundamental concerns in the study of communication, namely,
how people mean. Using the approach of General Semantics, this course asks how language and
language habits can cause confusion for oneself and for others. As a methods course, this course
considers case studies of the use of language across four domains: interpersonal, intrapersonal,
political, and health/business.
The approach taken will be one that brings theory to practice. The readings will provide the
theory and the in-class discussions and the case-study assignments will apply this to real world
examples of meaning-making in action.
The course is divided into five units. The first unit is the longest and involves an explanation of
the basic tools and principles of General Semantics. This is the most important part of the course
since the rest of the course involves applying these principles across various domains (and note
that your grade will be determined by how well you are able to apply these principles!). This first
unit has three sub-sections that each address major areas of General Semantics including:
Epistemology, Language, and Subjectivity. The remaining four units of the course each address a
specific area in which General Semantics principles will be applied.
Assignments
15% Class participation. Please turn off mobile devices – we only have 3 hours together each
week, so let’s make the most of it.
15% Weekly posts. The first week, you will be responsible for the assignment described at the
end of the syllabus. Starting in the second week and every week thereafter, find an example of
one of the communication errors described by General Semantics. Examples can be taken from
real life or fiction, and could include such things as news coverage (newspaper, radio, internet,
television, etc.), television shows, personal interactions with other people, blogs, comments
sections of any of the above). This is exciting because it gives you the chance to pick apart
someone’s argument and demonstrate what errors they made. And when you get really good at
this, you’ll be able to identify errors in your own speech. These are the best posts (note, I think
that you can make your post private if you would rather that no one else sees it – or alternatively,
you can just send it directly to me in an email). Posts should be made by midnight on Monday
night.
20% Class-wide case-study project. This project will involve an intensive study of an “event” to
be decided by the class (use the discussion board to make suggestions). It should be a topic that
is of interest to a majority of students in the class and that involves disagreement and
misunderstanding. The event should have occurred in the past year or two and could be in the
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international, national, or local news (local events are particularly welcome because they allow
for the possibility of getting first-hand accounts). The class will break up into groups and will
study different aspects of the event using the principles of General Semantics to analyze the
event as well as various people’s interpretations of the event. Older events are welcome since
they will have more layers of interpretations to analyze.
20% One small case-study write-up (roughly 4 pages). For most students, the small case study
write-up will function as a stub for the large case-study write-up.
30% Major case-study write-up based on your interests (maximum of 12 pages). You will decide
on a project that follows your interests and/or your coursework and define the project. I will
work with you to make every effort to make this project one that will be of benefit to your
undergraduate and/or professional career so start by thinking about what will be of most
interest/relevance for you.
Day by Day Outline of the Course:
Introduction to General Semantics
March 29 – the map is not the territory / the word is not the thing. The Structural Differential.
March 31 – NO CLASS
Turn in assignments by 5 pm
Oliver Reiser – Relativity and Reality
Goodwin – Professional Vision
Basic Concepts and Tools of General Semantics
April 5 – Epistemology I – The Structural Differential
Korzybski, Alfred. Fate and Human Freedom
Youtube video of Korzybski and the structural differential
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eE1iOM9FqBg&feature=related
Reiser, Oliver – Modern Science and Non-Aristotelian Logic
Korzybski, Alfred. The role of language in the Perceptual Process.
April 7 –Language I
Lee, Irving – Language Habits in Human Affairs, Chapters 1 & 2 (Language for the Living and
The Useful Use of Words)
Whorf, Benjamin – Language and Logic
April 12 – Language II
Whorf, Benjamin – The Relation of Habitual Thought and Behavior to Language
Whorf, Benjamin – Science and Linguistics
April 14
Lee, Irving – Language Habits in Human Affairs, Chapters 3 and 4 (The Many Uses of a Word
and Acquaintance, Abstracting, Non-Allness)
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April 19 – Subjectivity
Lee, Irving – Language Habits in Human Affairs, Chapters 5 and 6 (A World in Process and
Indexing Makes the Difference)
April 21
Catch-up day
April 26 – Discussion of whole class case-study
Lee, Irving – Language Habits in Human Affairs, Chapters 8 and 9 (A Spell of Words and
Descriptions and Inferences)
Applications of General Semantics
April 28 - WHOLE CLASS CASE STUDY WRITE-UP DUE IN CLASS
April 28 – Intrapersonal Communication
Lee, Irving – Language Habits in Human Affairs, Chapters 10 & 11 (When to “Keep Still” and
The Four “Is’es”)
May 3 – Intrapersonal Communication
Bourland, E-Prime as a tool for writing
May 5 – Interpersonal Communication
Johnson, Wendell – People in Quandaries Chapters 1 & 2 (Verbal Cocoons and Never the Same
River)
May 10 – Interpersonal Communication
Johnson, Wendell – People in Quandaries Chapters 4 & 5 (Science and Tomorrow and The
World of Not-Words)
May 12 – Mass mediated/Political Communication
Lee, Irving. Rhetoric of Hitler, Korzybski, and Aristotle
Stockdale, Steve. Response side semantics
May 17 – Intrapersonal communication
Johnson, Wendell – Chapter VI: The World of Words
May 19 – Interpersonal communication
Thompson, Greg – The recognition of attention deficit, non sequitur
SMALL INDIVIDUAL CASE STUDY WRITE-UP DUE IN CLASS
May 24 – Mass mediated/Political Communication
Wortham and Locher. Voicing the News.
May 26 – The Tyranny of Words
Chase, Stuart. Tyranny of Words. Chapter XI: The Semantic Discipline
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May 31 – Words as fetish – the case of Black English and Mock Spanish
Bucholtz. You da man: narrating the racial other
June 2 – How do words affect us? Magical words revisited: the healing power of words
Levi-Strauss, Claude. The Sorcerer and his magic.
FINAL PROJECT DUE JUNE 7
NOTE: as with all things constructed by human hands (minds?), the syllabus described above is
alterable and indeed is likely to be altered.
Some key General Semantics terms that you will learn throughout this course:
indexing and dating
etc.
inferencing
Non-Aristotelian
non-identity
abstraction
relations (relationality)
multi-ordinality
the “is” of identity
the map is not the territory
organism-in-the-environment
non-allness
e-prime
intensional vs. extensional
Non-Euclidean
non-elementalist
consciousness of abstracting
structure
semantic reaction
time binding
the word is not the thing
Weekly post assignment for first week:
Watch the one minute and forty second video at http://wn.com/simmel, and describe what
happened in one page or less. Post your paper to WebCT in the assignments folder by 5 pm on
Thursday, March 31, 2011. Be aware that we will be sharing these papers with the entire class.
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