This book presents a collection of essays intended for an integrated study of language by anthropologists, literary critics, philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, and linguists. There is first a discussion of theories concerning the interrelationship of language, thought, and culture. This is followed by a discussion of the development of concepts in children and in societies and of the relationship of language and experience in concept formation. There is a chapter on stimulus-response analysis of language and meaning; learning principles and their usefulness in language learning are considered. Remarks about the nature of language and language learning are included, followed by a discussion of artificial or formal languages and their comparison with natural languages. One chapter considers the ways an utterance can carry meaning; another, entitled "Cognitive or Noncognitive," analyzes the numerous ways an utterance can be judged under either of those two designations. The chapter on metaphors follows a general theory of symbolism by characterizing the metaphor semantically and by showing its semantic functions. The last two chapters cocern symbolism, first in the nonrepresentative arts and then in the representative arts, in an effort to examine the sign function in each field. (VM)