We must use terministic screens, since we can’t say anything without the use of terms; whatever terms we use, they
necessarily constitute the corresponding kind of screen; and any such screen necessarily directions attention to one field rather than another. Within that field there can be different screens, each with its ways of directing the attention and shaping the range of observations implicit in the given terminology. All terminologies must implicitly or explicitly embody choices between the principles of continuity and the principle of discontinuity. (50)
“Even if any given terminology is a reflection of reality, by its very nature as a terminology it must be a selection of reality; and to this extend it must function also as a deflection of reality” (45). “[T]he whole ‘picture’ [of reality] is but a construct of our symbol systems” (48). Though there is a sensory and material environment (that simply exists), these dissolve into “a web of ideas and images that reach through out senses only insofar as the symbol systems that report them are seen or heard” (48).
“Basically, there are two kinds of terms: terms that put things together, and terms that take thins apart” (49). “Often this shows up as a distinction between terministic screens positing differences of degree [continuity] and those based on difference of kind [discontinuity]” (50).
Though we each see through our own screens, there is some stability because we “first master…whatever tribal speech happens to be [our] particular symbolic environment” (53). This first speech, he implies, directs our attention to the things we can see and the symbolic actions we engage with from the beginning; it direct the choices we can make from there on.
Other Key Term
- Dramatism: “stress[es] language as an aspect of ‘action,’ that is ‘symbolic action’” (44). “A technique of analysis of language and thought as basically modes of action rather than as means of conveying information” (54).