Snarling, Purring and Buzzing: S.I. Hayakawa and Modern Rhetoric

After two world wars, midcentury America was sick of conflict and bloodshed.  Americans wanted Peace. They wanted Freedom. They wanted Democracy. But then, as now, they found themselves asking what those words mean.  In 1949 semanticist Samuel Inouye (S.I.) Hayakawa addressed the issues of what words mean -- and what they can do -- in Language in Though…