The Language Instinct

How the Mind Creates Language

By: Steven Pinker

Narrated by: Arthur Morey

In this classic, the world’s expert on language and mind lucidly explains everything you always wanted to know about language: how it works, how children learn it, how it changes, how the brain computes it, and how it evolved. With deft use of examples of humor and wordplay, Steven Pinker weaves our vast knowledge of language into a compelling story: language is a human instinct, wired into our brains by evolution.

The Language Instinct received the William James Book Prize from the American Psychological Association and the Public Interest Award from the Linguistics Society of America. This edition includes an update on advances in the science of language since The Language Instinct was first published.

©2011 Steven Pinker (P)2011 Brilliance Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Pinker writes with acid verve." ( Atlantic Monthly)

"An extremely valuable book, very informative, and very well written." (Noam Chomsky)

More about linguists than I expected

Not a book that should've been translated to audio format in my opinion. I got through half of the book before I couldn't handle what felt like a linguistics class to me. It also went on for a surprising amount of time about how bad AI is which outdated it quite a bit. I knew I didn't agree with all of Pinker's ideas but I was looking forward to hearing them. Didn't feel like I heard any of them though, just a laundry list of fricatives, phonemes, and phonetics.

Exceptional Book

Has great overlap of Linguistics and Psychology, and a very broad yet detailed look at the world through the lens of language.

A must read

This book is an interesting primer on linguistics. At times the material is difficult, but a "reread" will help clarify some of the more difficult passages. This is not only an overview of how we use language, but a glimpse into how our minds work. If you are at all interested in the mechanics and the development of language from infancy into adulthood, this is definitely a book for you to read.

Doesn’t hold up 25 years later

Pinker is very dismissive of views that don’t conform to his own. In a recently added afterward he frequently blames other people for misunderstanding his writing. This is an ironic claim for a language expert. The performance is adequate but the book contains many diagrams that are missed by the listener.

Fascinating

The content is fascinating, however some times hard to follow in audiobook format. The printed book contains diagrams which help clarify points difficult to grasp by just listening.

Excellent book!

This book should be essential reading for writers of fiction and creators of constructed languages.

Textbook For Linguists

Any additional comments?

I have always had an interest in language, but this book goes WAY too in-depth for my interests. I enjoyed the first quarter of the book and it held my interest with cognitive science and evolutionary theory related to language development. Then it moved long-term into highly-detailed language structure and other details that couldn't hold my attention - think 9th grade grammar on steroids. I stuck with it for a few more hours and also tried skipping ahead, but I knew I was wasting my time and bailed on it half way through. It didn't help that the narrator is the type who over-enunciates and has a passionless, unnatural speaking style that reminds you with every syllable that they are a professional narrator with apparently zero interest in the topic.

From a Typer

As a person being nonverbal, I've always had a problem with my grammar because I communicate through an augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) device and I never learned the proper way to speak. I still need to remind myself to type in complete sentences and make sure that I'm using proper grammar. I thought that "The Language Instinct" was extremely fascinating. I totally understand my ongoing mistakes when I'm communicating with others. When I'm working, I like to listen to audiobooks. It was very distracting to me when I was corresponding with my colleagues through email because I was noticing myself using the same bad habits with my grammar from the book.

Irritating recording distracts from the content

I'm not sure if the fault lay with the recording or the narrator, but in any case the audio is very sibilant. The slurred or hissed S's distract from the content, and sometimes have even caused me to go back and relisten to a word in order to make it out.

Nonetheless, the content is interesting.

Good book, feels a bit dated, but features updates

I enjoyed this book, though some of the pieces of information or anecdotes weren't new to me. I liked how the author clearly laid out his arguments, though I didn't always need 15 examples of the phrase or concept he was explaining. The book was a pleasant listen and I was pleased that it was broader than a basic discussion of language. The author allowed himself to spend time explaining related concepts and instincts to put the language stuff in perspective.

My main concern with the book was that it was a bit dated in places, including one reference that was just ridiculous from a 2012 perspective (but not central to the story Pinker was trying to tell). The book was first written in 94, I think, but was updated more recently. The end of book addresses those dated items. It was nice to hear a short update on some of the affected topics, though it sounds like Pinker's general theories did not change. The dated bits were mostly just pop culture references, I think the science (or theory) holds up.