General Semantics at UNLV. (News & Notes).About 35 students attended a course titled General Semantics and Public Discourse at the University of Nevada University of Nevada could refer to either of the universities in the Nevada System of Higher Education:
"Thanks to the generosity of Dr. Sanford Berman, who created the Sanford Berman Professor of General Semantics, the Hank Greenspun School of Communication was able to offer an introductory course in General Semantics during the summer term," Professor Watson told ETC ETC - ExTendible Compiler. Fortran-like, macro extendible. "ETC - An Extendible Macro-Based Compiler", B.N. Dickman, Proc SJCC 38 (1971). . Professor Watson introduced the students to the basic theories of general semantics and then led them in the application of the theories to the understanding of pieces of public discourse. The course began with an examination of the relationship between words and things. With that as a basis, the students were asked to look at language in action in samples of public discourse. "For example," said Dr. Watson, "the students examined Barbara Jordan's Statement during the impeachment impeachment, formal accusation issued by a legislature against a public official charged with crime or other serious misconduct. In a looser sense the term is sometimes applied also to the trial by the legislature that may follow. trial of Richard Nixon as a sample of how a skillful skill·ful adj. 1. Possessing or exercising skill; expert. See Synonyms at proficient. 2. Characterized by, exhibiting, or requiring skill. , principled rhetor rhe·tor n. 1. A teacher of rhetoric. 2. An orator. [Middle English rether, from Latin rh can use factual statements to support inferences. Within the speech, Jordan first states the criterion for an impeachable im·peach·a·ble adj. 1. Capable of being impeached: venal, impeachable public servants. 2. Being such as to warrant impeachment: an impeachable offense. offense and then iterates the activities of Nixon that correspond to those criteria. From a series of such factual juxtapositions, she draws the conclusion that Nixon's offenses are, indeed, impeachable offenses." During the course, Dr. Berman presented three lectures. Using quizzes that he has developed, he revealed to students how they jump to conclusions, confuse inferences with facts, and react to words as though they were things. He also focused on the intensional (philosophy) intensional - A description of properties, e.g. intensional equality, that relate to how an object is implemented as opposed to extensional properties which concern only how its output depends on its input. vs. extensional orientations. The final assignment challenged students to use all the skill they had learned to develop well-supported, soundly-reasoned arguments on both sides of a controversy. Topics ranged from an exploration of the facts and arguments on both sides of the proposed nuclear waste depository for Yucca Mountain, only ninety miles from Las Vegas, to an investigation of the war on drugs. Dr. Watson reports that the students in the class were uniformly enthusiastic about their first taste of general semantics and that after the course, a student with a public relations public relations, activities and policies used to create public interest in a person, idea, product, institution, or business establishment. By its nature, public relations is devoted to serving particular interests by presenting them to the public in the most focus observed, "I will never look at words and language in the same way again." |
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