Language in Thought and Action is a book on semantics

Semantics

Semantics is the study of meaning. It focuses on the relation between signifiers, such as words, phrases, signs and symbols, and what they stand for, their denotata....

 by Samuel Ichiye Hayakawa

S. I. Hayakawa

Samuel Ichiye Hayakawa was a Canadian-born American academic and political figure of Japanese ancestry. He was an English professor, and served as president of San Francisco State University and then as United States Senator from California from 1977 to 1983...

, based on his previous work Language in Action published in 1939. Early editions were written in consultation with different people. The current 5th edition was published in 1991. It was updated by Hayakawa's son, Alan R. Hayakawa and has an introduction by Robert MacNeil

Robert MacNeil

Robert Breckenridge Ware MacNeil, OC, known sometimes as Robin MacNeil, , is currently a novelist and formerly was a television news anchor and journalist who had paired with Jim Lehrer to create The MacNeil/Lehrer Report in 1975.-Early life:MacNeil was born in Montreal, the son of Margaret...

. Its Library of Congress control number is 92033105.
The book has sold over one million copies and has been translated into eight languages.
This book contains an in-depth treatise of thought-terminating phrases, other manipulative

Machiavellianism

Machiavellianism is, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, "the employment of cunning and duplicity in statecraft or in general conduct", deriving from the Italian Renaissance diplomat and writer Niccolò Machiavelli, who wrote Il Principe and other works...

secrets of semantics, and an extensive bibliography.