The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature by Steven PinkerMy review
rating: 2 of 5 stars
I am always hesitant to completely pan a book that is clearly written by someone vastly more intelligent than I, but in this case I would have to say that this book definitely did not work for me.
The root of my problem with this book is that the claims and synopsis printed on the cover seem to bear little relation to the actual material contained within. We are led to believe that this is a book solidly within the "popular science" category and that it will deal primarily with the concept of how language molds the way that we think and interact.
Instead, we crack open the novel to find what would best be suited as a textbook for the aspiring linguist. The first third of this book is devoted almost entirely to what seems like some sort of painful flashback to 6th grade English grammar lessons - on speed. Its been a long while since the days of transitive/intransitive/ambitransitive verbs, content-lockatives, and the like. I'll admit that I do not share Pinker's sense of thrill when discussing such topics, but I did slog through them and can vaguely see why he begins his discussion with this approach. Yet the "meat" of this initial discussion seems fairly scanty relative to the painfulness of the necessary effort on the part of the reader.
The book picks up a little steam as it heads into the next few chapters. Describing those on the "fringe" of the language & thought debate. First we hear of academics that make claims that imply that nearly all words are innate to the human mind, and are inborn as part of our genetic makeup (i.e. that our vocabulary is essentially hard-wired). Pinker dispatches this idea summarily - a feat that hardly seemed heroic, given how ludicrous the concept is.
Then Pinker goes on to disarm the arguments of the opposing camp, Determinists that believe that language controls thought. As an uninitiated, arm-chair philosophizer on the subject of language and thought, I had always given more credit to this idea. I am aware of how much of my inner life and thoughts seem to use a dialog that is carried out in words. However, Pinker gives scientific evidence that suggests that our minds control language moreso than the other way around. This was my favorite part of the book. Yet, by deflating this argument, Pinker also takes away a good deal of the relevance of the book, thereby deflating my interest as well...
The major themes in the rest of the book take the form of:
1. Dissecting the ideas of other academics in the field. Which again, would be a great deal more interesting if I had actually decided to go into graduate school for linguistics and was familiar with these persons.
2. Discussing tangental psychological/cultural concepts, often in terms that seem so divorced from language that one might wonder if they are sections taken from another book.
3. Hand-wavy ideas about the evolution of the human brain.
And last, but certainly not least...
4. LOOOOOONNNNGGGG paragraphs of word-"play" in-between.
Its not so much that Pinker doesn't have interesting ideas wedged in here and there, its just that if you've followed other sciences, you've most likely encountered most of these concepts before. Then again, even some of the original ideas that I found in this book were fairly obvious and were ones that I had already conceptualized myself, even if I wouldn't have been able to frame them as well as Pinker does. Furthermore, Pinker writes with a playfulness towards language that is fun in short bursts, but can obscure his point and be exhausting in the long haul. The delivery of some ideas were so couched in unnecessary detail that I almost felt like Steven Pinker and "The English Language" were sharing some sort of private joke. Frequently, after spending a few moments to decrypt some of his more florid paragraphs, I found that the concept they contained was fairly banal.
Pluses: Pinker clearly knows his stuff and presents it with what appears to be an unbiased eye. The sections involving direct scientific experiments were revealing and fun, as were the sections on polite language and sex (as sex always is...). The language of the book is a great exercise in concentration and is peppered with lots of great SAT/GRE-Prep words! Doubles in value as a good Kaplan study book! The take-home message seemed to be that language is not in control, we (and culture) are... Which is a reassuring thought, and is one that I am grateful to have learned.
Negatives: By thereby castrating the power of language to affect our thought process with his initial arguments, much of the remainder of the book is left floundering around in the domains of other disciplines. We hear of psychology, cultural practices, and evolution. Yet, language must now take a passive back-seat to these issues, only acting to give us tiny clues to their nature. The novel concepts that language can teach us turn out to seem scanty and flimsy. Furthermore, manner in which Pinker doles out these intriguing little nibblets seems unnecessarily drawn-out and buried in overly technical/flowery language.
In the end, too much of this book seems to reach for something larger, but end up as merely 'semantics' (fully in the negative connotation of the word).
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