• The Language Instinct

  • How the Mind Creates Language
  • By: Steven Pinker
  • Narrated by: Arthur Morey
  • Length: 18 hrs and 55 mins
  • 4.3 out of 5 stars (1,026 ratings)

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The Language Instinct  By  cover art

The Language Instinct

By: Steven Pinker
Narrated by: Arthur Morey
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Publisher's summary

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)

What listeners say about The Language Instinct

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Pronunciation

Inconvenient pronunciation of Wh. La la la la la la la la la la ta

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Speaker Overpronounces S's

The guy who reads the book either has a speech impedement or he is trying to get revenge by overpronouncing the S's. After listening to 5 minutes on my commute, i started flipping out and spent the rest of my commute trying to mimic how he was mispronouncing the S's. By the end of the day, after my commute home, I had given myself a sore throat because i kept trying to immitate how the guy was overpronouncing the S's. And believe me, I turned the treble all the way down, and the bass all the way up. I deserve a refund on this one....

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Other titles are better

I love Pinker, but this is excruciatingly boring, go read The selfish gene by Dawkins instead, or The Selfish Gene, or Sapiens , or Guns Germs and Steel

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Dense

Some chapters of this are more detailed and technical than one can absorb in an audiobook, which made the listening a little longer than I might have liked, but it held my interest and has changed my view of language for the better, I hope. Professor Pinker’s disdain for fuzzy reasoning is always appreciated.

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An absolutely fascinating book

A must-read (or hear) for anyone with an interest in language/linguistics, school reform, or psychology.

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Makes a Good Argument

Converted me to believe that there must be a language instinct. A relevant read despite its age, as the advances of the last decades have not substantially changed our understanding of this.

The few mistakes hardly detract from the main argument (e.g a false claim about additional expressive power in BEV, arguing against using genetic variation as support for a claim and then using it as support later, and a few others). The main claim of the book survives these oversights intact, as most are just factoids for reader interest rather than supporting evidence.

I admit being annoyed by one argument style: Pinker many times dismisses research or lines of questioning with "No one should be interested in this because it is boring." Do not tell me what I should not be interested in, the right to judge something as boring belongs entirely to me. The book would be better without these smug pronouncements.

Still, I can wholeheartedly recommend this to anyone with even a passing interest in language.

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Many secrets of language revealed

I have been a lover of language and linguistics for many years. This was one of the most eye-opening, mind opening and entertaining books I have listened to in quite some time.

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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.

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interesting and rich source of knowledge


i enjoyed listening to this book for its good contents and a good narration , it is a wide sammary of the subject of language that touches culture history anatomy and more to explains the beautiful complexity of the subject of languige

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Arcane

Very nich and subspecialized. I just let the audio ran and pick up what I can.

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