This week we encountered many key concepts in our reading, but one that always generates a lot of questions is the process of abstraction (pages 82-87). Hayakawa argues that we use this process mainly out of convenience. For instance, if your child needs to pick up a mess they made with Barbies, legos, Calico Critters and horses, out of convenience you would not list all these items but instead would most likely say, Gretchen, please pick up your toys! Let me show a few examples of how the items I listed above have been abstracted, since this can be a tricky concept. Barbie Dolls can be abstracted to a second level as dolls. Dolls can be abstracted again to a third level as toys. Legos can be abstracted to a second level as blocks. Blocks can be abstracted again to a third level as toys. Obviously there are more levels for each of these items, and even likely between the levels I already mentioned! Your job for this discussion is to pick an item (not discussed in the book or in this example) and abstract it two levels up, as I have done here. After you select your item and provide the two additional levels of abstraction, offer your opinion on whether you think the process of abstracting impedes meaning. We talked earlier about saying what you mean; does abstracting lead to problems because we are less precise with language when we use levels of abstraction?