These principles are harder to convey than the customary lists of errors that get recycled from one traditional style guide to the next. Rules of usage are well worth mastering, but they pale in importance behind principles of clarity, style, coherence, and consideration for the reader. Any competent copy editor can turn a passage that is turgid, opaque, and filled with grammatical errors into a passage that is turgid, opaque, and free of grammatical errors. Though bad writing has always been with us, the rules of correct usage are the smallest part of the problem. Similar lamentations about the slovenly habits of the young and the decline of English have appeared regularly since the invention of the printing press. But as a scientist who studies language for a living (and who has had to unlearn the bad habits of academic writing) I long ago developed my own opinions on why so much prose is so egregious.Ĭontrary to the ubiquitous moaning about the imminent demise of the language, this is not a new problem.
The arguments contained within ride on the backs of his previous works, which paint human nature as having "distinct and universal properties, some of which are innate – determined at birth by genes rather than shaped primarily by environment.I can get as grumpy as anyone about bad writing. Through this lens, Pinker asks questions such as "What does the peculiar syntax of swearing tell us about ourselves?" Or put another way, "Just what does the 'fuck' in 'fuck you' actually mean?", - as discussed in the chapter The Seven Words You Can't Say on Television. So you split the difference by saying something that literally makes no sense while also conveying the message that you're not treating them like some kind of flunky. On the other hand, you don't want to boss people around lightly. It's become so common that we don't even notice that it is a philosophical rumination rather than a direct imperative. For example, a common-place statement such as "If you could pass the salt, that would be great" functions both as a request (though formally not a request) and as a means of being polite or non-offensive (through not directing the audience to overt demands). Therefore, language functions at these two levels at all times. negotiate the social relationship between the speaker and the audience.Pinker argues that language provides a window into human nature, and that "analyzing language can reveal what people are thinking and feeling." He asserts that language must do two things: The book became a New York Times best seller. In the book Pinker "analyzes how our words relate to thoughts and to the world around us and reveals what this tells us about ourselves." Put another way, Pinker "probes the mystery of human nature by examining how we use words". The Stuff of Thought: Language As a Window Into Human Nature is a 2007 book by experimental psychologist Steven Pinker.
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