Language in Thought and Action is a book on semantics by Samuel Ichiye Hayakawa in consultation with Leo Hamalian and Geoffrey Wagner. It was originally published in 1939; its Library of Congress catalog number is 64-10333. In the main, semantics (from the Greek and in greek letters σημαντικός or in latin letters semantikos, or significant meaning, derived from sema, sign) is the study of meaning, in some sense of that term. ... Samuel Ichiye Hayakawa (July 18, 1906–February 27, 1992) was an English professor and academic who served as a United States Senator from California from 1977 to 1983. ...

"Insight into human symbolic behavior and into human interaction through symbolic mechanisms comes from all sorts of disciplines: not only from linguistics, philosophy, psychology, and cultural anthropology, but from attitude research and public opinion study, from new techniques in psychotherapy, from physiology and neurology, from mathematical biology and cybernetics. How are all these separate insights to be brought together? ...I have examined the problem long enough to believe that it cannot be done without some set of broad and informing principles such as is to be found in the General Semantics of Alfred Korzybski." This article is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ... General Semantics is a school of thought founded by Alfred Korzybski in about 1933 in response to his observations that most people had difficulty defining human and social discussions and problems and could almost never predictably resolve them into elements that were responsive to successful intervention or correction. ... Alfred Korzybski Alfred Korzybski was born on July 3, 1879 in Warsaw, Poland, and died on March 1, 1950) in Lakeville, Connecticut, USA. He came from an aristocratic family which had worked as mathematicians, scientists, and engineers for generations, and he chose to train as an engineer. ...

It contains an excellent bibliography.