The Many-Splendored Society is a multi-volume groundwork that explains how man's language creates social reality. The subtitle of this second volume, An Edifice of Symbols, points to a set of general categories and dimensions, all based on properties of language, for the study of social reality. We learn about norms and contracts, organizations, networks, mass media, folk life, and city life. Most important, we find out how symbols create the societal realms of science, economy, polity, art, religion, and morality. These realms have different goals and rationalities and exhibit different...

This third book on The Many-Splendored Society examines how we use language to inspire human beings to live in and develop their societies. We prompt ourselves by using "justifying vocabularies" and we prompt others by the use of "compelling vocabularies." These motivating vocabularies are short pieces of language with remarkable leverage. They epitomize the power of the language brain. Six justifying vocabularies are unique to each of the societal realms of science, art, economy, religion, polity, and morality. Four justifying vocabularies are at the core of the dominating ideologies in free...