Explore, if you will, the world of E-Prime. Arising from the thinking of Alfred Korzybski and the International Society for General Semantics which he founded, E-Prime consists of the subset of the English language left after expunging it of the use of the verb ‘to be’ in its two major functions of connoting identity (“I am a weblogger”) and predication (“I am nice”). Proponents feel that these uses of ‘to be’ cause major confusion of thought and consequent social problems. To start with, consider how the use of the same verb for identity and predication readily obscures the distinction between opinion and fact. Moreover, it readily lends itself to stereotypy and inflexibility.
This paper claims that using “E-Prime in Negotiation and Therapy” can challenge dogmatic viewpoints, clarify confusion, and defuse conflict in daily life. I don’t conduct myself as a strong proponent of E-Prime in my life; awkward circumlocutory constructions arise whenever I try to write in that way. But the difficulty in using it perhaps speaks to how early in our lives the associated thought patterns were ingrained. Language doesn’t determine what we can and can’t think, but it does readily shape what can be thought with ease as opposed to with difficulty, IMHO. Does the challenge involved in thinking ‘outside this box’ perhaps indicate the importance of doing so? The links above have plenty of further links if you want to explore your identifications and predications more thoroughly.
Nicely done.
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Nice post. A minor correction—Korzybski did not found the International Society for General Semantics. He did found the Institute of General Semantics in 1938.
As you rightly point out, E-Prime arose from his ‘thinking’ but he himself did not advocate the radical excision of all forms of the verb ‘to be’ from the English language. The suggestion to do so and the E-Prime program came later from one of his students, David Bourland.
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The exercise of writing in E-prime can lead to enlightenment. It can also lead to self-deception. Many strategies turn up for hiding the concept of “is-ness” in sentences that do not contain the forbidden word. For example, the verb “to exist” requires great care to avoid making it a substitution for “to be”.
Robert Anton Wilson came up with a simple strategy for using the forbidden word in a way that retains the spirit of E-Prime: always preface any sentence that contains it with a phrase like “It seems to me that…” or “In the opinion of some scientists…”.
A good exercise for the astute reader involves finding all the ways the “to be” concept got buried in the apparent E-Prime of this post. The really astute (or those with tons of time on their hands) should take care to phrase their analysis in E-Prime.
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