Institute of General Semantics

WORDS

and What They Do To You

Beginning Lessons in General Semantics
for Junior and Senior High School

by CATHERINE MINTEER

Illustrations by Lucy Ozone



Institute of General Semantics
Fort Worth, Texas USA
© 1953, Row, Peterson and Company
© 1965, Catherine Minteer
Web Edition © 2001, 2004 Institute of General Semantics

Editor's Note for the Web Edition

Front Matter

What We Observed in Teaching General Semantics
 
How the Lessons are Organized

The endsheets of this little book were designed to stress the facts that we live in a constant crossfire of language and that words do something to us. By words we mean all forms of communication—words that reach us in conversations and speeches and classroom discussions, over the radio and television, through newspapers, magazines, and books, from billboards and from advertising on packages.

As indicated above, the program developed in this book is in the area of communication. It presents comprehensive, flexible plans for a course of sixteen lessons. Based on some of the principles of general semantics, the lessons deal with the relationship between language and thought, with the scientific use of language, and with some misuses of language. The course is designed to train pupils to detect and to deal with bias, prejudice, oversimplifications, and ambiguity in what they read and hear. The pupil is also trained to look to language for a clue to understanding himself, understanding his relationship to others, and understanding his environment. Human relations, science, and social science can be correlated subjects in this expanded program of language arts.

Experience shows that these lessons provide pupils with a new, strong motivation for careful listening, critical reading, accurate speaking, and effective writing.