The second issue of 2023, ETC: A Review of General Semantics Vol. 80 No. 2, is in the mail and is now available for download from the IGS Store in searchable PDF format.

• Click here to download ETC 80:2 from the IGS Store.

Table of Contents

Letter from the Editor

Corey Anton, "A Dialogue with ChatGPT about Nonidentity: A Demonstration of a Range of Basic AI Capabilities"

Maria Polski & Olga Hazanova, "Introduction to the Work of Yuri Rozhdestvensky"Menippean Satire"

Alexandre Lobodanov, "Types of Communication in Semiotic Systems"

Natalia Guermanova, "Yuri Rozhdestvensky on Patterns of Cultural Evolution, Language Standardization, and Media Ecology"

Olga E. Hazanova, "Yuri Rozhdestvensky on Speech Media in the Light of his Philosophy of Language and Culture, and in Dialogue with Marshall McLuhan"

Anna A. Novikova, "Transmedia Storytelling in Education as a Practice of Media Ecology"

Liudmila Salieva, "New Media Environment, Challenges of Modern Education, and the Old Art of Rhetoric"; Dale Winslow, "Salutation and Soft Deception"

Peter Zhang, Richard John Lynn & Chen Bing, "Jiucai (Chinese Chives) Song"

Jane Blanchard, "Early August"Other Poems": 

Jane Blanchard, "Bird Feeder"

Carmine Giordano, "Ding An Sich"

Richard Fiordo, "Words and Things"

Julian Costa, "Ode to a Star"

Martin H. Levinson, Book Reviews

The video recordings of our online Ecologies of Mind, Media, and Meaning 2 Symposium held on April 29, 2023 via Zoom are now available via the IGS YouTube channel. For more information about the symposium, see our event page. 

The first issue of 2023, ETC: A Review of General Semantics Vol. 80 No. 1, is in the mail and is now available for download from the IGS Store in searchable PDF format.

• Click here to download ETC 80:1 from the IGS Store.

Table of Contents

Letter from the Editor

David Sobelman, "Addendum to Prof on First"

Thomas J. Farrell, "Walter Ong, Marshall McLuhan, and Eric McLuhan’s Two Books on Menippean Satire"

Lance Strate, "The Issue of Is: A Commentary on the
Case against the Verb 'To Be'"

Devkumar Trivedi, "To Know or Not to Know to Be-Lieve or Not to Be-Lieve [That Is the Question]"

Diane Cypkin, "The Prophet Ignored: Vladimir Ze’ev Jabotinsky and the Coming of the Holocaust"

Martin H. Levinson, "What the Fuck: Examining an “Obscene” Term"

Gina Valenti, "Art as a Counter-Environment during Lockdown"

Stan Kozikowski, "The Unread and Unknown Beowulf, Monstrous Evil, Ephesians VI 11–15, Psychomachia, and Negligible Tolkien: Revisiting with General Textual Semantics"

Martin H. Levinson and Katherine Liepe-Levinson, "Selections from Signal Reactions and Other Poems": 

Katherine-Liepe Levinson, "Happier Than Me,

Martin H. Levinson, "Is Everybody Happy?" 

Katherine Liepe-Levinson, "From All Over" 

Martin H. Levinson, "Labels"

Katherine Liepe-Levinson, "Virtually Speaking"

 Martin H. Levinson, "Where It’s @"

 Katherine Liepe-Levinson, "Warm Waters"

 Martin H. Levinson, "Every Day is Earth Day"

Katherine Liepe-Levinson, "Levels of Abstraction"

 Martin H. Levinson, "Ode to the Structural Differential"

Xristos Xousos, "Nothing in the Universe"

Xristos Xousos, "Ananda"

Andrew McLuhan, "Five Bloody Cannons"

Dale Winslow, "Transition Breathes above Desire"

Aaron R. Boyson, "Paper Cuts"

Martin H. Levinson, Book Reviews

The IGS sponsored a program session at the annual International Communication Association conference in Toronto, May 26th-29th, in Toronto. The program, entitled What Makes Politic Talk, or, Is It Time’s Up for the Democratic Experiment: General Semantics Perspectives, was chaired by IGS Trustee Laura Trujillo-Liñán, and featured addresses by IGS officers Thom Gencarelli, on "Media Bias, Two-Party Politics, and the Two-Valued Orientation: Why the U.S. Finds Itself on the Edge of a Second Civil War," and Lance Strate, on "The Double Bind of Rational Political Discourse".

Trujillo-Liñán, Gencarelli, and Strate also participated in a session sponsored by the Media Ecology Association.

Filmmaker TC McLuhan answers questions and gives away signed copies of her movie posters following the April 25th screening of her documentary, The Frontier Gandhi, at the Players in New York City. IGS President Lance Strate serves as moderator.

The Institute of General Semantics

and the

New York Society for General Semantics

are Proud to Present a Screening of

The Frontier Gandhi:

Badshah Khan, A Torch for Peace

A Film by TC McLuhan

Tuesday, April 25th, 2023

The screening will be free and open to the public, but registration is required.

Filmmaker, author, and IGS Fellow TC (Teri) McLuhan will be present to introduce and answer questions about the documentary.

For more information and to register, click here.

Our long-awaited double issue 79:3-4 (2022) of ETC: A Review of General Semantics is in the mail and is now available for download from the IGS Store in searchable PDF format.

• Click here to download ETC 79:3-4 from the IGS Store.

Table of Contents Preview

Letter from the Editor

Lance Strate, Introduction to Special Issue on Manhood of Humanity

Martin H. Levinson, Manhood of Humanity Revisited

Bini B. S., The Time-Binding Class of Life: Making Sense of Human Beings and Their Epistemic-Cognitive-Performative Faculties

Sanjay Mukherjee, Tallying (with) Korzybski;

David Hewson, Review of Manhood of Humanity

Tonisha Guin, The Subject of Knowledge: Reading Manhood of Humanity as an Identity Project

Lance Strate, Science, Progress, and Korzybski’s Progressive Vision

Rakesh Desai, The Civil and the Evil: Korzybski’s  Manhood of Humanity

Thom Gencarelli, Time-Binding and Art/Time-Binding in Art

Henna B. Muliyana, Evaluating If This Is a Man by Primo Levi Through Time-Binding

Prashant Chauhan, Effective? Time-Binding—A Revisit

Pratiksha N. Chavada, “Nurturing the Nature”: Re-Evaluation of Select Novels of Dhruv Bhatt through Time-Binding

Deesha Lathigara, Binding Time through Folktales

Devyani Chauhan. A, Dharmaraja Yudhisthira as a Failed Time-Binder as Well as a Wrong Evaluator

Our long-awaited double issue 79:1-2 (2022) of ETC: A Review of General Semantics is in the mail and is now available for download from the IGS Store in searchable PDF format.

• Click here to download ETC 79:1-2 from the IGS Store.

Table of Contents Preview

Letter from the Editor

Postman’s Legacy in a “Post-Truth” Landscape of Algorithmic Propaganda - Renee Hobbs

Between a Korzybskian Non-Allness and Mcluhan Allatonceness: The Rebirth of Irony in a Post-COVID-19 Epoch - Adeena Karasick

Respecting the Territory: Self-determined and Relational Technology in Indigenous Language Revitalization - Paul J. Meighan

Labeling in a Politically Correct Environment: A Study of Three Articles in ETC - Robert Barry Francos

Media Evolution—the Evolution of What? Thoughts on the Margins of Paul Levinson’s Human Replay (2017 [1978]) - Andrey Mir

An Open Letter to Vladimir Putin - Milton Dawes

Kenneth Burke, Neil Postman, and Grandma - Joshua Clements

Interdisciplinary Possibilities of General Semantics - Maria Polski

José Saramago’s Cain: Rewriting a Fallen Hero’s Journey through Time - Jyotsna Mayadas

Consumer Adoption of Virtual Reality Technologies - Agon Shehu

Hamlet Unread, America Lost, Language Unwritten, Earth Diminished: The Restorative Work and Worth of General Textual Semantics - Stan Kozikowski

Interstellar and the Beauty in Science - Elizabeth Jerse

Starship Troopers: Making Fascism Sexy Again - Michael Leifer

The Soul of America - Amy Malburg

Zen Buddhism and General Semantics - Em Hodgson

Situations of a Certain Type and Phone-tapping 101: A General Semantics Critique of Lloyd Bitzer’s “The Rhetorical Situation” - Tim Lyons

Distal Shift: A Spatial Consequence of Discrimination Learning - Joseph N. Agostino

A Quick Look at the Bathrooms of Belgium, the Netherlands and France - Suzanne G. Beyer

The Liar - Xristos Xousos; Nothing in the Universe - Xristos Xousos

Premises - Jane Blanchard

Season’s Greetings - Jane Blanchard

Dear Grandma - David Linton

Concerning Communication: Epic Quests and Lyrical Excursions Within the Human Lifeworld by Lance Strate

Published by the Institute of General Semantics

December 1, 2022

ISBN: 978-1-970164-20-6 (Print) 978-1-970164-21-3 (eBook)

Concerning Communication: Epic Quests and Lyrical Excursions Within the Human Lifeworld is a collection of essays that range across a variety of topics, including models of communication, language and symbolic communication, sense perception, the self, disability and autism, listening, reading, science, media literacy, ethics, innovation, systems theory, information, communication history, isolation, solipsism, technology, education, media ecology, and general semantics. Lance Strate’s unifying theme throughout this volume is the centrality of communication, as a phenomenon, to human life, and the importance of communication, as a field of study, to understanding ourselves and our place in the universe.

Expansive and engagingly written, Lance Strate’s Concerning Communication: Epic Quests and Lyric Excursions Within the Human Lifeworld is a nuanced and profound collection of essays that gets to the heart of what it means to communicate and why it matters. Whether a student or scholar of education, this multi-faceted book is a must-have for anyone wishing to know more about the many ways communication permeates and shapes our lived experience.—Allison Peiritsch, Associate Professor, Slippery Rock University

Concerning Communication contains a swath of knowledge as big as the Serengeti. This huge and potentially confusing topic has a nonpareil guide to show you the hidden thickets of fact and the swamps of fiction and error in your search to understand communication. Your author and guide, Lance Strate, is an internationally acknowledged scholar of human communication and a philosophy of communication mensch. Chapter by chapter, essay by essay, you will be congenially accompanying Strate in his continuing effort to clarify the facts and fancies, the underlying assumptions, and the presumptions of that which provides all of us the ability to know, make and sustain contact with others. Winter is coming so get a bowl of good warm soup, a comfortable chair, and start reading.—Frank E.X. Dance, Distinguished University Professor Emeritus, University of Denver

A wide-ranging set of essays with wide-ranging implications. Thought provoking on multiple levels. —Dale Cyphert, Head, Department of Marketing and Entrepreneurship, University of Northern Iowa

As we struggle to respond to the rapid changes in our world, it is imperative that we find ways to create meaning out of the overwhelming amounts of information that inundate our lives. Concerning Communication provides both form and substance to engage the reader in spirit and mind. Through the weaving of theory, history and narrative, Dr. Strate elucidates how communication is artifact and process, listening and language, both-and rather than either-or. In doing so, readers understand how they can be the authors of their stories and bring meaning to our world.—Paaige Turner, Dean, College of Communication, Information, and Media, Ball State University

 

The Trustees of the Institute of General Semantics

Proudly Present

The 2021 Samuel I. Hayakawa Book Prize to

Carolyn Wiebe and Susan Maushart (Eds.)

for

The Genes of Culture:

Towards a Theory of Symbols, Meaning and Media

Volumes One and Two

By Christine L. Nystrom 

Christine L. Nystrom’s provocative work offers up a fresh approach to ongoing—and increasingly urgent—questions about the role of symbols and technology in shaping human experience. In lucid, lively, and always-accessible prose, she examines an eclectic range of topics—from Hopi grammar to the etiquette of beach-going to the primal allure of the horror film—to uncover the principles that structure the way we make meaning of our world. A cross-disciplinary tour de force, The Genes of Culture integrates insights from philosophy, the physical sciences, social psychology, and cultural criticism to pose challenging questions for today’s students of media. This book is an exemplary foundation reader for graduates or undergraduates in communication and media studies.

Volume 2 of The Genes of Culture continues Christine Nystrom’s exploration into the ecology of symbol systems and the evolution of media, mind and culture. Part One, Human Symbolic Evolution, delivers nothing less than a grand unified theory of humankind. For Nystrom, the prehistoric creative explosion that gave rise to language—a metaphorical Big Bang—explains our species’ survival. A felicitous if somewhat ignoble story, it begins with "The Incompetent Ape" who would never have made the evolutionary cut without developing the social capabilities made possible through symbolic language. And human communication, an inevitable source of problems, is the driving force behind this most peculiar of adventures: the birth of self-consciousness, tools and technologies, pratfalls of memory, awareness of our own mortality, art, knowledge, civilization, discontent, and so on. And so on, that is, if we don’t bring our story to an end. In Part Two, a series of astute and provokingly prescient lectures, Tales, Tools, Technopoly, Nystrom addresses our social and moral responsibility in cultivating the narrative of our future. Straightforward and ruthlessly critical of contemporary notions of "growth" and "progress," it concludes this volume with an alternative that is also a challenge -- an appeal to our better nature to do right by our species and the planet. A seminal text for students of media and communication, The Genes of Culture, Vol. 2 is at once readable and profound, comprehensive in its erudition and bold in its conclusions. In the spirit of Media Ecology, it invites argument, and merits acclaim.

First given in 2009, the Institute of General Semantics awards the S. I. Hayakawa Book Prize to the most outstanding work published in the past five years on topics of direct relevance to the discipline of general semantics.  The prize includes a cash award of $1,000. 

For a list of past winners of the Hayakawa Prize, click here.