Word: hayakawa
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Phrases such as "Peace in our time" and "Prosperity is just around the corner" invoke "word magic," as linguists call verbal formulas that promise to make dreams come true through sheer repetition. On the other hand, observes San Francisco State College's S. I. Hayakawa, a pioneering U.S. semanticist. "You don't move a mass society with a volume by Galbraith." Particularly in the U.S., as Cambridge Historian Denis Brogan has pointed out, "the evocative power of verbal symbols must not be despised, for these are and have been one of the chief means of uniting the United...
...they help crystallize great issues of the past for future generations: "Give me liberty or give me death"; "Lebensraum"; "The world must be made safe for democracy"; "There'll always be an England"; "unconditional surrender"; "the Great Leap Forward"; "We shall overcome." In an increasingly complex society, as Hayakawa points out, such coinages are essential "short cuts to a consensus...
Seven Is Tops. The word "slogan," from the Gaelic sluagh (army) and gairm (a call), originally meant a call to arms-and some of history's most stirring slogans, from "Erin go bragh" to "Remember Pearl Harbor" have been just that. In peacetime, argues Hayakawa, electorates respond more readily to slogans that promise change, since people are rarely satisfied with things as they are. One notable exception was the catch phrase that helped return Britain's Tory Party to power in 1959: "You never had it so good." In general, though, Democrats, like detergent manufacturers, favor slogans that...
...Three cheers for S. I. Hayakawa [July 13] and the Anti-Digit Dialing League. ROBERT E. FORMAN aliases: 137-806 (bank account number) 473-20-6385 (social security number) 655-728-245 (hospital insurance number) 18-232-926 (life insurance policy number) 221836 } (various 5-2472 } credit 643-701-443-6 } account numbers) Oshkosh...
...possible that the phone company could come to a compromise with its A.D.D.L. users (and the rest of the human race) by simply using three letters whether they spell words or not? S. I. Hayakawa's number, 4 billion something or other, could read 415LUG2301, with each subscriber employing his own mnemonic to remember the letters, such as Loused Up Good...