Steven Pinker and the Abandonment of Audio Books

Harvard professor of psychology Steven Pinker is indirectly responsible for ending my brief flirtation with audio books. I grabbed the audio book of his latest, The Stuff of Thought: Language As A Window Into Human Nature, when it came out and began listening. It took me all of about one chapter to decide that people who listen to books instead of reading them probably aren't particularly serious about acquiring knowledge. While I'm sure that listening to Jim Dale or Stephen Fry reading a Harry Potter novel is fun, listening to non-fiction and actually understanding things is best left to only those with the best of memories because trying to back track in an audio book is a pointless endeavor. Instead of skipping tracks and rewinding, I'd much rather be flipping pages in order to find a passage in need of being reread. I never did pick up The Stuff of Thought but am making it a priority having seen and heard Pinker speak last night.


(Photo shamelessly horked from The Badger Herald.)

For over an hour, he gave a fascinating talk in which he plumbed the depths of language to reveal how we humans conceptualize reality, organize our emotions, as well as how language reflects the intentions and intuitions we have of others. Throughout his talk, Pinker dropped in pop culture references and had a PowerPoint presentation going which outlined his topic so that no one got lost. In addition, the technology gave him the chance to engage in a bit of audience participation. Although he went rather quickly at times, he was able to grab the audience's attention and hold it while he explored complex ideas in a manner designed for the layperson.

Pinker began by explaining how grammar provides a way to examine how the brain thinks about spatial and temporal matters. For example, he quoted the book Crazy English by Richard Lederer which noted, amongst other oddities, how things which we say are underground or underwater are really surrounded by earth or water and not really under these things. Language, we were told, conceptualizes space in a certain mode and our minds like to describe objects in binary ways (e.g. – near vs. far) and in relation to places. Because of the peculiar laws of physics embedded in our heads, borders become places or objects instead of simple one dimensional conceptions. Hence the border between dirt and air is a concrete thing to our line of thinking and stuff below this border is "under" the ground as opposed to being surrounded by it.

If learning about our brains' preferences when it comes to organizing space and time makes you self-conscious about your choice of prepositions, then the second part of the lecture would no doubt have left you eager to improve your ability to use profanity. Here Pinker explored swearing as a window to our emotions and began with Bono's infamous dropping of the f-bomb on television during an awards ceremony several years ago. He explained how profanity activates areas of our brains that are associated with negative emotions – the right hemisphere, the basal ganglia, and the amygdala. (This was as far as he went into non-profane anatomy during the whole lecture.) These taboo words are processed involuntarily, which is to say that our brains automatically comprehend their meaning. To demonstrate this, Pinker and his PowerPoint turned to the Stroop Test in which the audience was to say aloud the color a word appeared in as quickly as possible. The first round saw the word "red" in red, the word "green" in green, and so on. Round two had these same words but they were in a color different than that which they denote. So the word "red" appeared on the screen in the color white, for instance. The last round was a list of taboo words such as "fuck" and "cunt" in a rainbow of colors and the audience had a remarkably difficult time noting the color of the words as had proven so easy in the first go-round. (You can take a Stroop Test here.)



Pinker categorized the content of taboo words as well as how they are used to invoke negative emotions in others. For example, bodily effluvia evoke disgust and so "shit" is taboo. When discussing how taboo words are used, he noted 34 euphemisms for feces. This is to be contrasted with dysphemisms, for those times when we want to be literal instead of evasive. And there are times when we swear just to be abusive. Indeed, Pinker put swearing into five different categories. He also tried to revive an old bit of abuse by noting the bestial implications of the insult "Kiss the cunt of a cow" which was last used in 1585. Quite appropriate for Wisconsin, methinks.

His last topic, the use of innuendo, started with a line from Fargo, specifically, a scene in which Carl tries to get out of ticket by saying to the police officer, "I was thinking that maybe the best thing would be to take care of it here in Brainerd." Why do we veil bribes in this manner and, likewise, why do we ask for sex by inviting someone up to see our etchings?

To answer this, Pinker divided relationships into various types and showed how we guide them using the logic of ideas such as plausible deniability and mutual knowledge. And so in Fargo, Carl doesn't know the cop's disposition so he can veil his offer and deny it was a bribe if the offer isn't accepted. Veiling the bribe means that the worst outcome would be a traffic ticket while an unveiled bribe could result in a ticket and an arrest for bribery. In another example culled from real life, Pinker pointed out that a writer for Gourmet magazine wrote an article about bribing the maitre d's at posh Manhattan restaurants to see if he could get a table quicker. As it turned out, they were all receptive to his veiled offers and he got seated much quicker than had he not offered a little green.

Pinker, as the subtitle of his latest indicates, is a firm proponent of the idea that human beings come hardwired with a selection of traits, i.e. – there is such a thing as human nature. His previous book, The Blank Slate, was his manifesto in this area and it proved to be the source of much contention. Many were highly unamused at his postulating that rape has a basis in sexual selection instead of merely being a power play, a view inculcated in incoming freshman here at the UW. (Or at least that was the case when I came here.) The Stuff of Thought is much more focused and seems much less contentious, to the layperson, at least. I'm sure there are linguists who would take issue with some of Pinker's claims.

For my part, I left wondering if any criticisms from linguists undermine Pinker's notion of human nature or whether they are minor disagreements over certain mechanisms in our cognitive apparatus. On a slightly less grand level, I also had questions such as whether taboo words can ever lose their taboo status.

So, while it was a fascinating talk, it was also just a teaser which left me with much reading to do.

For a taste of Pinker's lecture, here's part of his talk on swearing that he gave last year.