Linguistic Therapy of Evaluation

Abstract

The linguistic therapy of evaluation (LTE) comes from the theory of general semantics (GS) developed by Alfred Korzybski. GS emphasizes the role that language plays in evaluating the world of “events,” that is, what is going on (WIGO in the individual’s world). GS is the science of both evaluation and values. “Evaluation” implies that a similar degree of importance is given to thinking and feeling. When evaluating an experience, we construe the world through language. Korzybski (1933, p. 24) defined a semantic reaction as “the psychological reaction of a given individual to words, language, symbols, and events, in connection with their meanings, and the psychological reactions, which become meanings and relational configurations the moment the given individual begins to analyse them or somebody else does that for him.” For Korzybski, living takes place in a world of “events” that the individal interprets and perceives as “facts.” GS theory assumes that every “fact” is a personal or idiosyncratic construction, that is, an interpretation through language. But language has a completly different structure from the world of objective “facts” or of “realities.” We use language to “fix” what is in process and may be unclear. Korzybski (1933) asserted that human beings should recognize and be trained in the implications of the three non-Aristotelian premises. At the core of his theory, they exemplify language/“fact” relationships. The first premise is that the map is not the territory, or we should never identify language with “facts”; second, language is incomplete, or the map cannot cover all the territory; and third, language is self-reflexive, or we can always make a map of a map of a map, etc. The Zeitgeist of his theory was a modernist philosophy. As with other scientists of his time, he believed that the proper use of science could be of great help for solving human problems. Based on the application of mathematics to daily living, he developed a non-Aristotelian system where subjects educated in GS principles learn how to use language for a better representation of “reality.” In this sense, he developed a non-Aristotelian training, described as the application of GS principles through reason, with the aim of making subjects scientists. Language as “representational,” “rationalism,” and “human beings as scientists” are the three main modernist characteristics of GS. However, the modernist flavor of GS contained a rupture with modernity. In some sense, Korzybski anticipated some current concerns, closer to a postmodern philosophy, such as the relevance of language and its influence on such cognitive characteristics as “knowing,” the role of values and evaluation, “relativism,” the importance of “nonverbal levels” of “reality” seen in an ongoing change and as a “joint phenomenon” between the observed and the observer, and so forth. These assumptions are at the core of LTE. We could consider LTE as a midpoint between modernist and postmodern perspectives.