The Language Instinct
How the Mind Creates Language
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Narrated by:
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Arthur Morey
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By:
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Steven Pinker
About this listen
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.Listeners also enjoyed...
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With dazzling wit and astonishing insight, Bill Bryson - the acclaimed author of The Lost Continent - brilliantly explores the remarkable history, eccentricities, resilience, and sheer fun of the English language. From the first descent of the larynx into the throat (why you can talk but your dog can't) to the fine lost art of swearing, Bryson tells the fascinating, often uproarious story of an inadequate, second-rate tongue of peasants that developed into one of the world's largest growth industries.
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More satire than history
- By Barbara Kindle Customer on 12-18-15
By: Bill Bryson
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Mind in Motion
- How Action Shapes Thought
- By: Barbara Tversky
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 11 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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In Mind in Motion, psychologist Barbara Tversky shows that spatial cognition isn't just a peripheral aspect of thought, but its very foundation, enabling us to draw meaning from our bodies and their actions in the world. Our actions in real space get turned into mental actions on thought, often spouting spontaneously from our bodies as gestures. Spatial thinking underlies creating and using maps, assembling furniture, devising football strategies, designing airports, understanding the flow of people, traffic, water, and ideas.
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Physically difficult to listen to
- By Claire Hay on 11-08-19
By: Barbara Tversky
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The Art of Language Invention
- From Horse-Lords to Dark Elves, the Words Behind World-Building
- By: David J. Peterson
- Narrated by: David J. Peterson
- Length: 9 hrs and 23 mins
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From master language creator David J. Peterson comes a creative guide to language construction for sci-fi and fantasy fans, writers, game creators, and language lovers. Peterson offers a captivating overview of language creation, covering its history from Tolkien's creations and Klingon to today's thriving global community of conlangers.
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Great resource, but not conducive to audiobook
- By Ashley T. on 04-18-16
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The Blind Watchmaker
- Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design
- By: Richard Dawkins
- Narrated by: Richard Dawkins, Lalla Ward
- Length: 14 hrs and 40 mins
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The Blind Watchmaker, knowledgably narrated by author Richard Dawkins, is as prescient and timely a book as ever. The watchmaker belongs to the 18th-century theologian William Paley, who argued that just as a watch is too complicated and functional to have sprung into existence by accident, so too must all living things, with their far greater complexity, be purposefully designed. Charles Darwin's brilliant discovery challenged the creationist arguments; but only Richard Dawkins could have written this elegant riposte.
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Challenging textbook more than an enjoyable listen
- By Eric on 01-15-12
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The Ravenous Brain
- How the New Science of Consciousness Explains Our Insatiable Search for Meaning
- By: Daniel Bor
- Narrated by: Walter Dixon
- Length: 11 hrs and 15 mins
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Consciousness is our gateway to experience: it enables us to recognize Van Gogh’s starry skies, be enraptured by Beethoven’s Fifth, and stand in awe of a snowcapped mountain. Yet consciousness is subjective, personal, and famously difficult to examine: philosophers have for centuries declared this mental entity so mysterious as to be impenetrable to science. In The Ravenous Brain, neuroscientist Daniel Bor departs sharply from this historical view, and proposes a new model for how consciousness works.
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Effectively demystifies consciousness
- By Gary on 11-18-12
By: Daniel Bor
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The Complete (Short) Guide to Absolutely Everything
- Adventures in Math and Science
- By: Adam Rutherford, Hannah Fry
- Narrated by: Hannah Fry, Adam Rutherford
- Length: 7 hrs and 2 mins
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Geneticist Adam Rutherford and mathematician Hannah Fry guide listeners through time and space, through our bodies and brains, showing how emotions shape our view of reality, how our minds tell us lies, and why a mostly bald and curious ape decided to begin poking at the fabric of the universe.
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Humour and understandability.
- By Chris B on 09-08-24
By: Adam Rutherford, and others
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Memory Craft
- Improve Your Memory with the Most Powerful Methods in History
- By: Lynne Kelly
- Narrated by: Nancy Linari
- Length: 8 hrs and 18 mins
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Groundbreaking anthropologist and memory champion Lynne Kelly reveals how we can use ancient and traditional mnemonic methods to enhance and expand our memory.
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So grateful this is on Audible!
- By happy_reader on 02-19-22
By: Lynne Kelly
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The Cosmic Serpent
- DNA and the Origins of Knowledge
- By: Jeremy Narby
- Narrated by: James Patrick Cronin
- Length: 4 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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This adventure in science and imagination, which the Medical Tribune said might herald "a Copernican revolution for the life sciences", leads the listener through unexplored jungles and uncharted aspects of mind to the heart of knowledge. In a first-person narrative of scientific discovery that opens new perspectives on biology, anthropology, and the limits of rationalism, The Cosmic Serpent reveals how startlingly different the world around us appears when we open our minds to it.
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Very Good Religious Text
- By Blair K. Hartman on 08-09-17
By: Jeremy Narby
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Brain Rules (Updated and Expanded)
- 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School
- By: John Medina
- Narrated by: John Medina
- Length: 8 hrs
- Unabridged
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In the New York Times bestseller Brain Rules, Dr. John Medina, a molecular biologist, shares his lifelong interest in how the brain sciences might influence the way we teach our children and the way we work. In each chapter, he describes a brain rule - what scientists know for sure about how our brains work - and then offers transformative ideas for our daily lives. Medina’s fascinating stories and infectious sense of humor breathe life into brain science.
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Dear Publishers . . .
- By Bekah on 04-06-17
By: John Medina
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Excellent, but a difficult listen.
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Don't bother. Outdated science & poor logic...
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I really love listening to language--and McWhorter
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Excellent, but a difficult listen.
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Don't bother. Outdated science & poor logic...
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I really love listening to language--and McWhorter
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A great book, done a great injustice by the audio
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There are no direct records of the original Indo-European speech. By comparing the vocabularies of its various descendants, however, it is possible to reconstruct the basic Indo-European roots with considerable confidence. In The Origins of English Words, Shipley catalogues these proposed roots and follows the often devious, always fascinating, process by which some of their offshoots have grown.
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Soooooo boring
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Beyond superficial
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Almost Impossible to Listen to Without Text
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Review By a Fan
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Clarity of Common Memory Issues
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Word Perfect
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From 1st January to 31st December the listener will discover a curious coinage or a fascinating etymological fact linked to that particular day - from the dramatic true story behind stealing someone's thunder to the original Jack the Lad. Word Perfect gathers all her very best discoveries from the true origin of freelancer which comes from knights who were free to use their lance for whoever paid most, rather than being tied to a single lord. (Also secretaries kept your secrets so were secretries).
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I’ve played this book approximately 500 times…
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The Story of Human Language
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Language defines us as a species, placing humans head and shoulders above even the most proficient animal communicators. But it also beguiles us with its endless mysteries, allowing us to ponder why different languages emerged, why there isn't simply a single language, how languages change over time and whether that's good or bad, and how languages die out and become extinct.
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You'll Never Look at Languages the Same Way Again
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What listeners say about The Language Instinct
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Shorttyler
- 03-26-24
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.
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5 people found this helpful
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- NB15
- 02-26-19
Exceptional Book
Has great overlap of Linguistics and Psychology, and a very broad yet detailed look at the world through the lens of language.
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- Archie R. Whitehill
- 10-06-20
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.
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- Michael K
- 04-23-19
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.
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3 people found this helpful
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- JD
- 06-07-18
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.
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- G. Pike
- 12-17-16
Excellent book!
This book should be essential reading for writers of fiction and creators of constructed languages.
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- Michael
- 06-28-13
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.
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- Tim
- 03-11-22
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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- Amie
- 01-11-13
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.
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13 people found this helpful
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- Rachel
- 11-29-12
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.
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1 person found this helpful