‘Language in Thought and Action’ S.I. Hayakawa

this book on Semantics was first issued in 1941 as a response to the dangers of propaganda by you-know-who. “Semantics is the study of human interaction through communication. Communication leads to cooperation or conflict. The basic ethical assumption of semantics, analogous to medicine and health, is that cooperation is preferable to conflict”. (preface, ix, ibid).

It’s funny how thoughts are ours only until they are spoken aloud or written down for all to read. As soon as they move from inside to outside, the praise or censure of society cannot be reversed. Yet sometimes silence can say as much as words.

‘This silence for my sin you did impute,
Which shall be most my glory being dumb.
For i impair not beauty being mute
When others’ would give life, and bring a tomb’. Sonnet 83.