The Tyranny of Words

The pioneering and still essential text on semantics, urging readers

to improve human communication and understanding with precise, concrete

language.   In 1938, Stuart Chase revolutionized the study of semantics with his classic text, Tyranny of Words. Decades

later, this eminently useful analysis of the way we use words continues

to resonate. A contemporary of the economist Thorstein Veblen and the

author Upton Sinclair, Chase was a social theorist and writer who

despised the imprecision of contemporary communication. Wide-ranging and

erudite, this iconic volume was one of the first to condemn the overuse

of abstract words and to exhort language users to employ words that

make their ideas accurate, complete, and readily understood.   “[A] thoroughly scholarly study of the science of the meaning of words.” —Kirkus Reviews   “When thinking about words, I think about Stuart Chase’s The Tyranny of Words. It is one of those books that never lose its message.” —CounterPunch

Stuart Chase (1888-1985) Born in Somersworth, New Hampshire was an

American economist and engineer trained at MIT. His writings covered

topics as diverse as general semantics and physical economy. His hybrid

background of engineering and economics places him in the same

philosophical camp as R. Buckminster Fuller. It has been suggested that

he was the originator of the expression a New Deal, which became identified with the economic programs of American president Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He had a cover story in The New Republic

entitled "A New Deal for America," during the week that FDR gave his

1932 acceptance speech promising a new deal, but whether FDR

speechwriter Samuel Rosenman saw the magazine is not clear.

He was a member of the Technical Alliance, and involved with the Technocracy movement. In The Economy of Abundance

Chase suggests that the facts behind the ideas of Technocracy

Incorporated remain more important than whether Howard Scott was a

degreed engineer or not.

His 1938 book The Tyranny of Words

was an early (perhaps the earliest, predating Hayakawa) and influential

popularization of Alfred Korzybski's general semantics which can still

be read with profit.