THE STUFF OF THOUGHT
Language as a Window into Human Nature
Steven Pinker
Viking Press, 2007
LEARNING OBJECTIVES - This course was designed to allow the reader to:
• Learn about the confluence of language and human nature
• Learn what swearing reveals about emotions
• Learn why verbs are considered the “chassis of the sentence.”
• Learn what innuendo discloses about relationships
• Learn how our use of prepositions and tenses taps into peculiarly human concepts of space and time
• Learn that nouns are the easiest words to identify across languages and usually are the first words learned by babies.
• Learn why people remember the gist of what they hear or read
• Learn metaphors through the review of the United States Declaration of Independence
• Learn about taboo words
• Learn how our nouns and verbs speak to our notions of matter
• Learn how the names given to babies have implications about relations to their families and society
• Learn why reciprocal altruism is the evolutionary basis for Equality Matching.
• Illustrate how one’s mind might construct the world using Plato’s allegory of the cave
• Question how language affects thought, and which of our concepts are innate
• Learn how the brain works in a completely new style
Steven Pinker, Ph.D., is Professor of Psychology at Harvard University and the author of many books about language and the mind.
17 CE credits; 512 pages
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