Steven Pinker is a professor at Harvard College as well as a professor in evolutionary psychology and computational theory of mind at Harvard University. Even though Pinker is very specific and technical in his experimental work, Pinker writes his books for the general audience to read. Steven Pinker used experimental subjects in the fields of mental imagery, shape recognition, as well as visual attention. The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language is a book I would recommend to an interested audience because the unique methods Pinker takes advantage of such as visual sentences, vocabulary lists, and example words help get across information to his readers in unique ways.
The central idea that The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language really highlights is that humans are born with an instinct for language. The definition of innate is inborn or originating in the mind. The book really emphasizes that the instinct of language is innate. The key point that Steven Pinker makes about language being instinct is that language is not new, but it is there and ready to be learned by humans when they are born.
The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language covers many broad topics such as evolutionary psychology, cognitive science, and behavioral genetics. The book is written in a very interesting style. Not only were the above topics discussed and analyzed by Pinker with words, Pinker also used visuals to help convey his important points about the topics. The visuals that Pinker used include sentence structure equations, which included multiple words for different scenarios. Another visual used was a tree diagram to help form the structure of the sentence. The interesting part of the style was that it was universal for all humans because it is innate, and humans learn language the in the same methods. Through the many examples Pinker gives to help illustrate to the audience how language is innate, he also makes a claim that language is not only innate, but language is the result of natural selection and actually evolved over time. Steven Pinker highlights throughout the novel that language is really an adaptation that benefits humans in the ways of communication.
The concepts in The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language relate to the classroom in various ways, but they most important way they link to class is the concepts of learning and innate traits. In class we discussed short-term learning, long-term learning, as well as traits being innate or instinctual. In class we have also learned about natural selection and adaptations. In The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language, language is considered an adaptation in which this adaptation was achieved through natural selection. If language really does act as an adaptation for humans, then the three things necessary for natural selection that include groups of organisms with variation of traits, traits must be heritable, traits must give survival and or reproductive advantages really do function universally for all things undergoing natural selection.
The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language is a book meant for all audiences with self-interest in language as a topic. The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language is not a very advanced book in neuroscience or in language at all. No prior background information really needs to be known for a reader to understand this book. Steven Pinker does a great job at providing readers with all the background information they may need, and then elaborates on it. In the beginning of the book, Pinker looks to find a mutual ground about language by providing common examples about misunderstood topics such as questioning the reader to understand how language is so overlooked, and if the reader even realizes how they are able to understand what he is writing. Steven Pinker does a good job at filtering almost all technical parts of the book in a way for a very broad audience to understand it. When Pinker begins to discuss prefixes and suffixes, he analyzes why humans use certain suffixes or prefixes when either could work. To help make Pinker's audience understand the topic of suffixes, Pinker uses a broken down tree diagram to help depict why a certain suffix is used compared to another. With this tree diagram serving as a visual aid, Pinker really gets his point across of why a certain suffix is used because the visual aid breaks down word meanings and even how to say it with the use of your tongue.
The science behind Steven Pinker's claims seem very consistent with his examples that make readers pronounce words with directions, analyze simplified tree diagrams, as well as analyzing sentences with varied verbs in different tenses. The science is accurate and valid because Pinker has done his own research as well as referencing other renowned scientists to help support his general premises. The arguments Pinker makes about how language is very instinctual, and can be picked up very easily especially at a young age is very well constructed through sort of a simple to complex scale. Pinker states his general premises to be that language is innate and has been evolved over many years. Steven Pinker stays with his general premises, and offers an abundance of supporting claims and evidence. The presentation of neuroscience in this book is very simple, and I had no problem understanding any aspect of it because Pinker does a great job at simplifying considerably advanced ideas about language that includes ancestral genes and evolutionary psychology. I would recommend anyone with self-interest in the topic of language to buy and read this book because it will broaden your perspective on one of the most overlooked innate tools that allow for communication among humans.
The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language
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Last update: 10-14-2024
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