Clear Description of Ladder of Abstraction
4 Levels of Semantic Abstraction (by S. I. Hayakawa)
Level Four: Abstractions
Examples: life, beauty, love, time, success, power, happiness, faith, hope, charity, evil, good.
Level Three: Noun classes: broad group names with little specification.
Examples: People, men, women, young people, everybody, nobody, industry, we, goals, things, television.
Level Two: Noun categories: more definite groups.
Examples: teen-agers, middle-class, clothing industry, parents, college campus, newborn child, TV comedies, house plants.
Level One: Specific, identifiable nouns.
Examples: Levi 501 jeans, my blue, three bedroom house on Hollis Street, In Living Color, Bud commercials, African violets, Tina's newborn sister, Mina.
Loren Ekroth ©2012, all rights reserved
Loren Ekroth, Ph.D. is a specialist in human communication and a national expert on conversation for business and social life.