The Tyranny of Words

Stuart Chase

• Publisher: Mariner Books
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9780544313132
• eBook ISBN:
  9780544664432
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

The pioneering and still essential text on semantics, urging readers to improve human communication and understanding with precise, concrete language.
 
In 1938, Stuart Chase revolutionized the study of semantics with his classic text, The  Tyranny of Words. Decades later, this eminently useful analysis of the way we use words continues to resonate. A contemporary of the economist Thorstein Veblen and the author Upton Sinclair, Chase was a social theorist and writer who despised the imprecision of contemporary communication. Wide-ranging and erudite, this iconic volume was one of the first to condemn the overuse of abstract words and to exhort language users to employ words that make their ideas accurate, complete, and readily understood.
 
"[A] thoroughly scholarly study of the science of the meaning of words." — Kirkus Reviews
 
"When thinking about words, I think about Stuart Chase's The Tyranny of Words. It is one of those books that never lose its message." —CounterPunch

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Contents
• Copyright
• Acknowledgment
• A Writer in Search of His Words
• A Look Around the Modern World
• Inside and Outside
• Cats and Babies
• Primitive Peoples
• Pioneers—I
• Pioneers—II
• Meaning for Scientists
• The Language of Mathematics
• Interpreting the Environment
• The Semantic Discipline
• Promenade with the Philosophers
• Turn with the Logicians
• To the Right with the Economists
• To the Left with the Economists
• Swing Your Partners with the Economists
• Round and Round with the Judges
• Stroll with the Statesmen
• On Facing the World Outside
• Appendix
• Selected Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author
• Footnotes