DEPENDENCE 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 WORD'S MEANING MAY VARY ACCORDING TO SPEAKER, WRITER, LISTENER, READER, OR…

A SEMANTIC DISCUSSION OF LANGUAGE IN GENERAL AND OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN PARTICULAR, THIS VOLUME IS DIVIDED INTO TWO BOOKS--"THE FUNCTIONS OF LANGUAGE" AND "LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT." BOOK 1 DISCUSSES LANGUAGE AND SURVIVAL, SYMBOLS, REPORTS, INFERENCES, JUDGMENTS, CONTEXTS, INFORMATIVE AND AFFECTIVE CONNOTATION, ART AND TENSION, AND THE "LANGUAGES"…

THIS BOOK ABOUT THE FUNCTIONS OF LANGUAGE IN HUMAN LIFE EMPHASIZES LEARNING HOW TO CLASSIFY, DEFINE, AND ANALYZE. FOLLOWING AN EXPLANATION OF THE PHYSIOLOGICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL ROOTS OF LANGUAGE, CHAPTERS ON ANALYSIS, MEANING, SIGNS, AMBIGUITY, SEMANTIC GROWTH, AND METAPHOR LEAD TO A DESCRIPTION OF THE COMMUNICATIVE FUNCTION OF LANGUAGE,…

The fifteen essays collected here are grouped under three sections, each dealing with a different, but related theme. The first section, exploring the relationship of literature to the human being, includes "The Jinnee in the Well Wrought Urn,""A Dialectic of Aural and Objective Correlatives,""Metaphor and the Twinned Vision," and"Voice as Summons…