The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature

"In this book he analyses how our words relate to our thoughts and to the world around us, and what that tells us about ourselves. You could say he is probing the mysteries of humanity and our nature through how we use words. That sounds a bit metaphysical, but as a writer Pinker is always grounded in a very real and sophisticated knowledge of psychology . He’s done a lot of research into cognition and language so there is a bedrock of science there. He is at the same time a really enjoyable, whimsical writer. He’s the sort of writer who one moment will be talking about some rather recondite academic squabble or curious feature of language, and the next will drop references to Woody Allen, Lenny Bruce and Tom Lehrer. There’s a real sense that there is a journey going on, and I like that he asks questions that don’t normally get asked. There’s a fantastic chapter about swearing called “The Seven Words You Can’t Say on Television”. He asks questions about things we take for granted. For instance, what does the fuck in fuck you actually mean? I think that’s tremendous, because he is throwing up surprising answers to questions about everyday features of language. It’s quite a dense book and yet very clear. One review said it’s like taking your brain apart, and I know what the reviewer means. When Pinker writes about the mind, one begins to understand how it works – almost as if it’s a giant meccano set. He’s incredibly good at straddling the boundaries between the academic and the mainstream. One of the things he talks about in the book is how we offer bribes, threats and sexual invitations in ways which are quite funny when one looks at them in isolation. They are elaborate and circuitous. He poses the question: How do our choices of metaphor backfire on us? He approaches this in a way that blends anecdote and serious neuroscience, and that’s what makes it so powerful. He’s perennially concerned about the way language negotiates the relationship between speakers and audiences. He shows that language is at the very centre of our lives, and how language makes us human. But he also has a lot to say about how ineptly we often use language, and all the disasters that the use of our language can provoke. Broadly speaking, yes. The facility for language is seemingly hardwired within us. Obviously, the way it manifests itself varies tremendously. But the capacity for language is part of the whole package of humanity. Pinker has made that case over many books and done it very effectively. One of the things that’s incredible about him is the duality in his writing. He’s very interested in neuroscience , but he’s also interested in words in a kind of trainspotterish way, which is a quite unusual combination. He constantly cuts from the macro to the micro. One moment he’s explaining the ascent of man, and the next he’s investigating irregular verbs the way the rest of us might indulge in talking about great food or wine or old jazz records. There’s a lovely mix of the amateur lover of language and the person who has a richly evolved understanding of the cognitive machinery which makes it all possible. I think that’s the reason for his popularity. You feel educated by what he says but he doesn’t write in a haughty, academic way – there is a grassroots love of language and all the things you can do with it."

"This is about language more generally, but it has a great chapter on swearing. It’s a really good, shorter summary. It’s most like the Bergen book, where he hits all the highlights about swearing and physiology in terms of how it works in the brain and the effects it has on your body. There’s a little bit about religion and how it went from the religious to the sexual and excremental. Mostly, I love his definition of swear words as words that kidnap your attention and don’t let go. He gives a great description of how the n-word works, which is that when we hear this word, we’re almost made complicit in this whole history of racism and animosity. It’s a really interesting way of describing how the word works. Yes, exactly. Once you hear it, you can’t unhear it. It works despite you and is forcing you to feel a certain way and think certain things. I’m not familiar with her work, but I’d be interested to see studies whether asterisked swear words would affect your recall or how it would work. Certainly hearing “frick” instead of “fuck” has a very different effect, even we know that “fricking” is supposed to be “fucking.” I certainly think that cuts the effect. But with censorship like that, it’s often a concession to morality. You wouldn’t swear in front of someone’s grandmother even though maybe the grandmother swears all the time. There are just certain times we think it’s not appropriate to swear. When you’ve got asterisks in a book, you’re calling attention to the fact that this is not a context in which it’s appropriate to swear. For example, in a newspaper. They’re saying we know this is a bad word, so we’re going to put it in, but not fully put it in. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter Some people really are offended by swearing, whether they should be or not. The Guardian in England seems to take the view that these just words, so we’re going to print them. Others will use asterisks or put “expletive deleted.” There’s a variety of ways that people do it, depending on who they think their readership is or their general moral stance. Swearing is a funny thing. A lot of people are really shocked by it, but it’s not really as shocking as some of the things going on in the world today. Yes, they are useful. I know Benjamin Bergen says that Japanese doesn’t have swear words, but I would disagree—I think every language in the world has swear words. People do need words with this extra power. And you’re right, if you were to be incredibly blasé about it all, then we would be losing a useful function of language. “If you were to be incredibly blasé about swearing then we would be losing a useful function of language” Luckily, for those of us that are more blasé, it’s never going to happen totally. There will be always be something available to us. Even as “fuck” and “cunt” are losing power, things like racial slurs are gaining power. I think something new will come up—we will never be without them. From Ulysses , there’s the line: “I’ll wring the bastard fucker’s bleeding blasted fucking windpipe!” That’s a great one. But in terms of the construction, even though it doesn’t belong to any particular author, I love “for fuck’s sake.” I love this idea that it used to be “for God’s sake” but now you can just stick “fuck” in there and it doesn’t change much. It sums up this transition from religion to sexuality, with the formulaic nature of it. And it still makes sense."