As you also know, Dr. Berman has been a student of general semantics and a leader in the field for many years. And all thought it might be appropriate for me to say a few words this evening about general semantics – while recognizing that a reception is no place for a lengthy lecture.

Fifty years ago these remarks would have been unnecessary. Dr. Hayakawa’s Language in Action was a best seller and a Book of the Month Club selection. (He was, as Don Hayakawa to me, the Hayakawa who later was called Sam, and represented California in the U.S. Senate.) Sandy’s mentor, Northwestern professor, Dr. Irving J. Lee was wowing students and other audiences alike. He was the author of, among other publications, Language Habits in Human Affairs. And my father’s book, <People in Quandaries, was being read in the same circles – and is still in print today, well over half a century from its first publication.

General semantics courses were available on campuses all over the country. There were local off-campus discussion groups in many communities, and chapters of the International Society for General Semantics.

Today the books are still there, the International Society still exits, the European Society for General Semantics has its Web page, but most of the giants in the field are no longer with us. The courses are no longer taught. Not only are our communication graduate students unaware of the field, many of their professors are as well.

Our three institutions are seeking to remedy that failure, to bring back some teaching and research regarding this most fundamental of communications’ disciplines.

It is difficult enough to explain general semantics over the course of a semester to a lecture hall of undergraduates – and in those days the popularity of the courses was such that they did need to be taught in large lecture halls. So it is virtually impossible to do so in a few brief moments at a reception.

I will be brief indeed in this summary.

General semantics concerns itself with the impact of language on human behavior. It is a study, in part, of how our reactions to the words sometimes get in the way of what we will call, for lack of a better word, reality.

One of Dad’s lines was that “the human species is the only animal species whose members are able to talk themselves into difficulties that would not otherwise exist.”

My father was a stutterer. He was not the world’s first stutterer. He was the world’s first speech pathologist. As he put it, “I became a speech pathologist because I needed one.” There was no library research to do. Just a number two pencil and a blank pad. The remedies hadn’t changed since the Middle Ages; they were still cutting tongues.

He began by researching what he called the “onset of stuttering.” How and when and where does it begin? And what he found was that there was no measurable difference between the two- and three-year-olds who were labeled by their loving parents as “stutterers” and the other, so-called “normal” children.

As he finally concluded, “stuttering begins, not in the child’s mouth but in the parent’s ear.” If you care about a child enough you will want to help it when it is repeating words. Help it enough and you can create the problem we call stuttering.

He found an Indian tribe with a language that had no word for stuttering. Same caring parents. No young stutterers.

It was this early research that led to his interest in general semantics.

What other problems, he asked himself, might be the product of our reactions to the labels we use?

My sister and I were forbidden to have food dislikes. Why? Because, he said, until we had the external evidence of how the food actually tasted we were obviously simply reacting to the label, not the food.

As he put it,

“A rose by any other name
Would never, ever smell the same,
And canny is the nose that knows
An onion that’s been called a rose.”

If you’re interested in more, I have createa memorial Web page to my father, Wendell Johnson, as a link off of mine. Mine is easy to remember: just www.nicholasjohnson.org

But enough of general semantics and Web pages. We are here to visit, have a bite to eat and drink, and enjoy ourselves.

It is Sandy Berman who has been the force that brings us together. We are grateful to him, and as soon as we can get back to the bar will each toast him in our own way.