LANGUAGE IN ACTION

Duration: 30 min

Year Published: 1956

Creator: Produced by KQED

Format: 16mm

Color: B&W

Sound: Sound

Description: 13-film series. Titles: 1. TALKING OURSELVES INTO TROUBLE. Discusses the area of general semantics. Develops the idea that one's language determines the limits of one's world. Illustrates the way in which undifferentiated reactions to words lead to a communications deadlock. 2. MAPS AND TERRITORIES. Discusses the power and limitations of symbols, especially words. Describes the significance of the communications network in which humans live. Defines words as "maps" giving directions to "territories" of human experiences. 3. WHAT IS LANGUAGE? Defines language as a series of self-contained systems. Shows how words have different meanings within linguistic systems. Provides illustrations of linguistic sub-systems. Points out the hazard of "premature presumption of understanding". 4. HIDING BEHIND THE DICTIONARY. Shows how dictionaries are prepared. Explains how the meanings of words are learned without using the dictionary. Provides examples of how words are inferred from both physical and verbal contexts. 5. WHERE IS THE MEANING? Explains where the true meaning of words is found. Points out that meaning is in the nervous system of the speaker and listener, not in the words themselves. Discusses four basic conditions of meaningfulness: (1) those which are physical and verifiable by observation; (2) rules of the language; (3) valuative; (4) society and its institutions. 6. EXPERIENCE AS GIVE AND TAKE. Discusses the nature of perception and knowing. Illustrates how experience involves a transaction between perceiver and the thing or event perceived. Demonstrates the trapezoid window illusion. Relates perception and knowing to communication. 7. TASK OF THE LISTENER. Discusses the relationship between personality and communication. Explains human behavior in terms of the self-concept. Defines self and shows how it differs from the self-concept. Illustrates the way in which the self-concept controls acceptance or rejection of a message. 8. HOW DO WE KNOW WHAT WE KNOW. Describes the way in which abstractions are formed from sensory data. Traces the successful levels of abstraction from the object or event to high level verbal abstractions. Shows how communication is affected when verbal abstractions cannot be traced back to lower levels. 9. LANGUAGE OF ADVERTISING. Discusses advertising and the way in which it often commits a multitude of semantic crimes. Points out techniques used to bring about automatic reactions to advertisements. Points out that the danger in some advertising lies in "the promotion of pathological reactions to words and other symbols". 10. SEMANTICS OF THE POPULAR SONG. Contrasts the attitudes toward love developed by the lyrics of popular songs and the blues. Uses the concept of the idealization-frustration-despair disease to illustrate the orientation of the lyrics of most popular songs. 11. WORDS THAT DON'T INFORM. Discusses the use of pre-symbolic language in furthering communication. Defines the function of social language. Shows how social conversation enlarges the possibility of friendship and communication. 12. WHAT HOLDS PEOPLE TOGETHER. Discusses communication as man's primary means of survival. Explains the stages of organization through which human society has evolved. Stresses the organization of society around a physical meeting place, verbal symbols, shared perceptions, and intercultural communication. 13. HOW TO SAY WHAT YOU MEAN. Defines communication as a speaker-listener relationship. Explains the difference between a sign and a symbol. Discusses the importance in communication of proper translation which involves finding experiences to match other experiences.

Complete Record: Source: NET Interest level: c-ad Price: ea $125, rent ea $5.25 Format: sd b&w Catalog numbers: EFLA evaluation card No. 4151

Metadata Source:Educational film guide. Supplements (1959-62)