The director of a school where I work came into the room I was in a few days back, laid a book down in front of me, and said “You’ve got to read this – he’s the next Noam Chomsky.” It was “The Language Instinct” by Steven Pinker.
I admire Chomsky greatly. His linguistic theories are very often over my head and politically, although we have many areas of agreement, he tends to be a bit obsessed with Israel and how evil they are, but he’s always interesting and frequently enlightening. So, sure, I’m happy to give Pinker a shot.
Steven Pinker
I’ve barely started the book, so my opinions are still being formed and I’d appreciate any comments anybody has. I’m not sure. He started off with a spirited defense of Ebonics, which he calls BEV (Black English Vernacular). I suspect the reason he does that is because nobody takes Ebonics seriously, it’s too easy to ridicule. Calling it something else doesn’t make it sound any less stupid. If you grow up in the United States, it’s pretty important to be able to express yourself in standard English. His overall point was that all languages are equal, any thought can be expressed in any language, and I’m just not sure I buy that. He does argue the point well, though.
Then, as I was reading today, I came across a bit that made me sit up and take notice, because it speaks to the way I write, and think. When I first started writing poetry, I would wait until I had an idea and then try to write a poem. Later, I began to just start writing and playing with words and eventually an idea would form. In other words, I went from “idea to words” to “words to idea.”
Pinker wrote: “We have all had the experience of uttering or writing a sentence, then stopping and realizing that it wasn’t exactly what we meant to say. To have that feeling, the has to be a “what we meant to say” that is different from what we said.” So, we’re back to “idea to words.”
It inspired me to write this, a fragment of a poem, which I’d like to work more on, I feel it’s unfinished:
The link between thinking and writing is choosing
the thoughts that most nearly approximate
our mental and emotional state
There are no words in an animal’s brain
But when they see clouds, they know it will rain
They know so much that they can’t explain
Longing and hunger and fear and pain
I’m not 100% sold. I think that words most definitely form our thoughts, but it might work both ways. It might have to. I’d be interested in hearing anybody else’s opinion on this.
www.gurukalehuru.com 
For me… my thoughts, feelings, emotions surface first, then as I write the words flow easily, with some revisions after re-reading. What an excellent insight you stated about animals having knowledge, thoughts, feelings…but no ‘words’. Every living creature has these but expresses them differently, without ‘words’. Expressions from our ‘souls’…which my professor pointed out is located in the lower frontal lobe of our brains….are revealed in every ‘word’, movement, and facial expression, thus exposing what is going on in our brain.
Glad you liked it. I really think I need to add to that poem, though, it feels unfinished to me.
The jury has been back in session for some time now.
Pinker is full of shit.
He’s full of shit and a leftist apologist.
Full of shit, but he’s no “leftist apologist”. He’s a neoliberal careerist if there ever was one.
Basically the Bono of “cognitive” psychologists. More into the pseudo principles (and pseudo science) of scientism than the very real principles of scientific inquiry and rigorous falsification. He even hangs out with the same neoliberals that Bono does — i.e., Bill Gates. They all flock together these careerist weasels. I find it both unbelievably ironic and hilarious that he gets into fights with Malcolm Gladwell. Just two Americanized Canadian pseudo intellectuals with “unusual” hairstyles. Has anyone actually ever seen these two in the same room at the same time? Separated at birth? I think the hate must come from realizing that they are competing for the same audience and there can be only one when it comes to winning over people who think the New Yorker and NYTimes are the peaks of Western critical thought. The giants of the Enlightenment, who were not known to be base self promoters, must be rolling over in their graves over these two (no matter how much Pinker claims to revere enlightenment principles).