In his latest book, Steven Pinker explores ‘the other side of the linkage, meaning,’ which includes meanings of words and how meanings change within social settings.
By Joan Ruddiman Special Writer
Though it’s always tempting to reach for the “fluff,” a reading challenge can help us keep our edge. Though Steven Pinker, a Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, is indeed a challenging thinker, his books are also enjoyable. In 2004, Time magazine named him one of the hundred most influential people in the world — the accessible intellectual, if you will.
“The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature” (Penguin) is the third in not one, but two trilogies that Professor Pinker has written “for a wide audience of readers who are interested in language and the mind,” he explains.
The first, “The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language” (1994) offers “everything you always wanted to know about language but were afraid to ask,” he says. Harper Collins published an updated version in 2007.
Professor Pinker sees language as a way to connect sound and meaning as explained by the “spheres” he developed in “Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language” (Harper Collins, 2000). He defines these units of language in “how they are stored in memory, and how they are assembled into the vast number of combinations that give language its expressive power.”
Now, in “The Stuff of Thought,” he tackles “the other side of the linkage, meaning,” which includes meanings of words and how meanings change within social settings — what linguists call “semantics and pragmatics.”
“The Stuff of Thought” also “rounds out another trilogy — on human nature.”
“How the Mind Works” (Norton, 1997) evoked a lot of reader conversation as Professor Pinker explored the human psyche “in light of cognitive science and evolutionary psychology.” Then, in “The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature” (Penguin, 2003), he further explored the moral, emotional, and political “colorings” of human nature.
The fascination with Professor Pinker’s work is how he forces his readers’ awareness of what we take for granted. “Language is entwined with human life,” he writes — so much so that we lose perspective on how language defines our world and us.
“We use (language) to inform and persuade, but also to threaten, to seduce, and of course to swear. It reflects how we grasp reality, and also the image of ourselves we try to project to others and the bonds that tie us to them. It is, I hope to convince you, a window into human nature.”
Keep that thesis — the “window into human nature” stated in the title — firmly in mind as Professor Pinker digs deep foundations in each chapter in which he grounds his evidence. Some discussions go so deep that the concepts are buried. Others are whimsically fun, for example, the phenomenon of common names.
He begins his discussion of the culture of naming children — fads and fashions — with a riff on his own given name, Steven. Offering a “Pile ‘Em High” cartoon that links his name with other Steves as authors of brainiac books, he jokes about the plethora of smart Steves in his generation —Hawking and Gould, Budianksy and Jones, to say nothing of Techie CEOs Ballmer, Jobs, and Case.
Why is it that names go through a “boom or bust cycle” he ponders, making the point with a “Guess her approximate age?” game. Edna, Ethel and Bertha are senior citizens. Susan, Nancy and Debra — oh no! — are aging baby boomers!
I remember as a kid not knowing anyone named Debra older than 10 — except in the Bible. I entered school with Debbies galore. The Jennifers, Amandas and Heathers are into their 30s, and the new hot names are Madison, Olivia and Isabella (my newest grandniece).
Professor Pinker observes that girls’ names “turn over more quickly than boys’” and that Robert, David, Michael, William, John and James “just won’t go away.”
Twenty-eight years ago, I made up the name Jillian as a combination of Jill and Ann in keeping with the family “J” connection. Yet when we arrived at kindergarten, a Jillian — with the same birth date, no less — was in our Ms. Jillian’s class.
He offers an explanation. “Names don’t grow and shrink along a single dimension like lapels, but they do have many traits that vary: the sounds of their onsets or codas, their etymologies (Hebrew, Latin, Greek, Celtic, Anglo Saxon), their literal meanings (flowers, jewels, weapons), their associations with famous people.”
Another chapter than readers might jump to first is “The Seven Words You Can’t Say on Television.” Professor Pinker says that his intent is to provide “a tour of the linguistic, psychological, and neurological underpinnings of swearing.” What he admits that Bill Bryson did so well in “The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got That Way” (William Morrow, 1990), he extends to encompass understandings from current brain research. He explains, in some detail, how the “error-related negativity” and the “rage response circuit” in the limbic system work together. Bottom line: Swearing is good for us.
Professor Pinker looks at models of language, how we understand and manipulate time and space and causality, and “entertain ideas and steep them with emotions.” He writes, “The view from language shows us the (Plato’s) cave we inhabit, and also the best way out of it … with the use of metaphor and combination, we can entertain new ideas and new ways of managing our affairs.”

