Reference no: EM131608465

We come back, then, to the judgments explicitly announced at the beginning of this book...-that widespread intraspecific cooperation through the use of language is the fundamental mechanism of human survival, and that, when the use of language results, as it often does, in the creation or aggravation of disagreements and conflicts, there is something wrong with the speaker, the listener, or both.

Sometimes, as we have seen, this "something wrong" is the result of ignorance of the territory, which leads to the making of inaccurate maps; sometimes it is the result, through faulty evaluative habits, of refusing to look at the territory but insisting on talking anyway; sometimes it is the result of imperfections in language itself, imperfections which neither speaker nor listener has taken the trouble to examine; often it is the result of using language not as an instrument of social cohesion but as a weapon.

The purpose of this book has been to lay before the reader some of the ways in which, whether as speakers or listeners, we may use or be used by the mechanisms of linguistic communication.

some people may be tempted to use them as weapons with which to stir up arguments, as clubs to beat people over the head: "The trouble with you, Joe, is that you have a bad case of two-valued orientation," " For God's sake, Julia, stop being so intensional!"

Those who use the book this way may be said to have understood it but dimly.

Analyze the parable "The Story of A-Town and B-Ville: A Semantic Parable" (pp. 77-81). In a standard 5 paragraph essay, explain which of Hayakawa's lessons about language it illustrates.