Do words and the rest of our behavior affect each other? A critical response to The Language Instinct

From: et Cetera | Date: July 1, 1996| Author: | Copyright information

IN HIS popular recent book The Language Instinct, the MIT professor Steven Pinker claims we produce language as spiders spin webs, as the result of some instinct. But spiders spin webs alone, without first needing to see another web; as Pinker admits, humans need to hear words before they learn to use them.

Why? We learn to speak as a part and product of our responses to social situations; words matter to us because they signal and affect what we sense, think, and do. But in order to defend his claim that instinct creates language "spontaneously," independently of whatever else happens, ...

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