This volume comprising critical essays on General Semantics by both established scholars in the field and new practitioners is the first of its kind coming out of India, and therefore could be called a pioneering work on the subject. With the establishment of Balvant Parekh Centre for General Semantics and Other Human Sciences in Baroda in 2009 the study of General Semantics has gathered a new impetus in India. General Semantics, which is developed in the United States by the Polish mathematician and engineer Alfred Korzybski after the First World War as a hybrid discipline having a practical orientation did not enter the academy in a big way. But, however, its methodological implications for the human sciences are now being realized by scholars throughout the world. We hope the publication of this volume will usher in a fresh and organized approach to the study of General Semantics in India. The contributors to the volume have tried to explain lucidly some of the key terms in General Semantics like “structural differential,” “time binding,” “thalamo-cortical integration,” “dating and indexing,” “conscious abstracting,” “creatical thinking,” “extensional devices” etc. Also some of the ideas from Korzybski’s two seminal works, Manhood of Humanity and Science and Sanity are related here with ideas from the work of Marshall McLuhan and Neil Postman, who continued and transformed the Korzybskian thinking to suit the changed milieu of their time. Some contributors have demonstrated in their writing the conceptual links between general semantics approach to life and the visions of creative writers. This volume will be a useful contribution to the disciplines of literary studies, philosophy, linguistics, communication and media studies, psychology, and education.


DEEPA MISHRA is an Associate Professor of English at Smt CHM College, Ulhasnagar, University of Mumbai. She received her Ph. D. from Utkal University, Bhubaneswar in 1995; her dissertation was “Hawthorne and the Question of Femininity: A Study of His Major Fiction.” She was a Fellow at the School of Criticism and Theory at Cornell University in 2008. She has published in some national and international journals on topics in American Literature, Odia Literature, translation studies, and general semantics. She is one of the editors of Anekaant: A Journal of Polysemic Thought, published annually by Balvant Parekh Centre for General Semantics and Other Human Sciences, Baroda.