E-Prime Week: E-Prime and Non-Violent Communications

Some here in the US of A get together with family and friends today for Thanksgiving. Many enjoy it. Some...do not. This obligatory face-time can be stressful, and can lead to conflict, or worse, creepy, smiley passive aggressive behavior. It's a great time for relatives to take cheap shots at your non-traditional lifestyle. But you don't have to take part in the weirdness!  Break the cycle of snark!!

E-Prime Week gives us the opportunity to start the holiday season off with just a little less conflict, and Non-Violent Communication  (NVC) can be a good addition to your semantic toolkit. Here are links to a couple of links to articles to help you tune up your communications skills and invite a little less ire, and a little more "irie!

Happy E-Prime week, Everybody!!!

(Hey Everybody! If you haven't already read it, you must get a copy of this book. Along with RAW's other writings, this one really redecorated my reality tunnel. Enjoy it, and please, help spread the word about National E-Prime Week!)

 

From Quantum Psychology 

by Robert Anton Wilson

published by New Falcon Press

E and E-Prime

In 1933, in Science and Sanity, Alfred Korzybski proposed that we should abolish the "is of identity" from the English language. (The "is of identity" takes the form X is a Y. e.g., "Joe is a Communist," "Mary is a dumb file-clerk," "The universe is a giant machine," etc.) In 1949, D. David Bourland Jr. proposed the abolition of all forms of the words "is" or "to be" and the Bourland proposal (English without "isness") he called E-Prime, or English-Prime.

A few scientists have taken to writing in E-Prime (notable Dr. Albert Ellis and Dr. E.W. Kellogg III). Bourland, in a recent (not-yet-published) paper tells of a few cases in which scientific reports, unsatisfactory to sombunall members of a research group, suddenly made sense and became acceptable when re-written in E-Prime. By and large, however, E-Prime has not yet caught on either in learned circles or in popular speech.