Pinker has a talent for accessible analogy and the apposite observation - when writing about how quickly toddlers learn language, he notes, 'What tourist isn't momentarily amazed at how well the little children in France speak French!' This plausibly illustrates how the human mind conceives of physical events in nature, and certainly of how social interactions are processed. -Deborah Camerson, The Guardian The pleasure of Pinker's book is in watching the careful skill with which he … There were things I liked about "The Stuff of Thought" and things I didn't. In sum, Pinker warns, “the machinery of conceptual semantics makes us permanently vulnerable to fallacies in reasoning.”. The Stuff of Thought provides an excellent introduction to the relationship between cognitive science and language, all while engaging the reader in a light-weight, cultured script.
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A valid email address is required in order to post a review, but it will not display online, Please click here to read the review guidelines. The author looks at matters like cleaving the air (4) and the metaphor metaphor by which we have various common ways of thinking about certain things, like government as a family with different conceptions of how this is, and so on (5). His focus is neither the mechanics of grammar nor the neurological structures that make language possible.
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Hence its subtitle: “Language as a Window Into Human Nature.” It sounds as though he’s finally going to pull together his life’s work under one big idea, but he doesn’t. Pinker has an intriguing and substantiated take on the social life of people and in this book, he unwraps some tested and untested theories that are thought provoking. Pinker first suggests there is no rule that explains why some verbs are suitable for locative alternation and others are not, and thus sends us off down a series of grammar-filled psycholinguistic dead ends before revealing that there is in fact a rule that distinguishes 'spray' from 'pour'.
We complain about doublespeak but rely on double meanings. Even their common lesson has two sides. In most cases, the reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication.
Language as a Window into Human Nature. Being a scientist is hard.
Considering scientific questions with examples from everyday life, The Stuff of Thought is a brilliantly crafted and highly readable work that will appeal to fans of everything from The Selfish Gene and Blink to Eats, Shoots & Leaves. Instead, the rules of syntax for every language on Earth lie dormant in …. Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature at Amazon.com. That would be dualism. In Catholic countries, the inhibition remains. Find out in Science with Sam.
The majesty of Pinker’s theories is only one side of the story.
Change ), You are commenting using your Facebook account. email; X. Then there’s the clash between ancient and modern science. Pinker weaves this paradox from a …
We confuse differences in group averages with claims of group superiority. This is the experimental psychologist … The importance of metaphor for understanding and conveying ideas is very well-explained. Religion once provided the taboo words for English, but the Reformation began the process that removed their power to shock. Perhaps most controversially at all, the author talks about taboo speech and how it is that there is a point to having speech be taboo in that reducing the taboos on talking about certain subjects may shape behavior in a negative fashion by making us feel less respectful of others.
Categories intersect like dimensions. Reviews |
I am not a fan of his humor leading to a less enjoyable reading experience than expected. In politics, the linguist George Lakoff has warned, “frames trump facts.” In this view, taxes can be depicted as burdens or as membership fees, driving public opinion this way or that. Post was not sent - check your email addresses! Full access is for members only. From physical journeys, we build an understanding of relationships. After that the author explores verbal taboos (7) and the games people play regarding implicature (8), a fascinating aspect of communication for me personally, before ending with a discussion on escaping from the cave of ignorance (9), after which the book ends with notes, references, and an index. That’s his kink.
By studying its chief manifestation: language. The riffs continue: verb taxonomies, the nuances of “politeness theory,” the comparative languages of South American tribes. On another layer, though, the book makes a worthy meta-work in that it comments on the sort of approaches that various (competing) approaches for linguists have and the author himself explicitly draws attention at times to his rhetorical strategy, most notably when he discusses the strategy that he uses to make his own position about the importance of language in shaping thought appear to be more reasonable by contrasting it with more extreme competing options. The medium isn’t just reason; it’s language — and language isn’t the manifestation of one mind; it’s the joint manifestation of millions.
Have no fear, because Pinker doesn't. It’s not that Pinker thinks the world can be neatly divided. Aristotle thought projectiles continued through space because a force propelled them.
Taking a lead from Pinker and focusing on the language, it's fair to conclude that the word 'stuff' in the title is something of a giveaway.
It starts on the first page.
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