The Stuff of Thought Reflection
In this class, we have spent time analyzing and trying to understand the concepts in Steven Pinker’s book The Stuff of Thought. The book breaks down the way we think and relate it to everyday life situations. The book covers many interesting topics than can affect the way we think about our daily lives. This book challenges us to think critically about our language and how it affects the way that we think. The book gives good examples to try and relate what is being said to try and help the reader understand the concept better and give examples people can relate to. This books gives advice on how to better understand the way we think and improve the way we communicate with one another. This paper will be breaking down concepts that are brought up in The Stuff of Thought and applying it to personal experience and encounters that I have had with these concepts. Some of the concepts that will be covered in this paper include language acquisition, linguistic determinism, metaphors, names, and the changing of words over time. …show more content…
One concept covered in the book is the difference between the sense and the reference of a word. “The two meanings of ‘meaning’ are sometimes referred to as reference (a thing or set of things in the world) and sense (a summary formula)” (Pinker 282). In other words, reference is what the object is actually and sense is what we perceive the object to be in our head. In most cases, the sense and reference of a word are the same, but it all depends on a person’s perception of sense and reference of word. For example, if another person and I are talking about a dog and I think that it is a Golden Retriever and the other person thinks it is a Yellow Lab, we both have the same reference, but we have different references of what the object is.
Another concept covered in Pinker’s book The Stuff of Thought is language acquisition. Language acquisition is the way that we learn and acquire our language. Everyone knows that babies cannot speak. But how do they pick up and learn a language such as English? At some point they learn the language and eventually become proficient in it. There are many theories presented in Pinker’s book on how we acquire language. One of the theories is that we acquire language through imitating people we hear speaking the language. Pinker opposes this belief and says, “To become so fluent in a language, children must have analyzed the speech around them, not just memorize it” (Pinker, 28). What Pinker is saying is that instead of just memorizing words in the language, we have to think critically about the language and understand why there a certain rules and concepts instead of just memorizing words and phrases. Pinker says that children imitate but hey also generalize language. If children only imitated what was said by their parents, they would not be able to formulate new ideas and concepts within the language. I found this to be particularly true in high school when I took Spanish for four years. Before taking Spanish class, the only language that I have ever known was English. Over those four years of taking Spanish classes, I found it very difficult to acquire the language and be able to proficiently speak the language. I found myself a lot of the times just trying to memorize words and phrases so I would have something to write down during the written test or say during the verbal speak test. In the short term, it probably helped me to know some words and phrases for the test, but in the long run, I have lost most of the knowledge that I have learned from taking the classes. If I were have to thought analytically and really think about the concepts of the language, I know I would have done better in my Spanish classes and definitely would have been more proficient in the Spanish language. In Chapter 8 of Pinker’s book The Stuff of Thought titled Games People Play, he talk about indirect speech and how we do not say directly what we want to say and how we say things in such an indirect way. When talking with others,
In this class, we have spent time analyzing and trying to understand the concepts in Steven Pinker’s book The Stuff of Thought. The book breaks down the way we think and relate it to everyday life situations. The book covers many interesting topics than can affect the way we think about our daily lives. This book challenges us to think critically about our language and how it affects the way that we think. The book gives good examples to try and relate what is being said to try and help the reader understand the concept better and give examples people can relate to. This books gives advice on how to better understand the way we think and improve the way we communicate with one another. This paper will be breaking down concepts that are brought up in The Stuff of Thought and applying it to personal experience and encounters that I have had with these concepts. Some of the concepts that will be covered in this paper include language acquisition, linguistic determinism, metaphors, names, and the changing of words over time. …show more content…
One concept covered in the book is the difference between the sense and the reference of a word. “The two meanings of ‘meaning’ are sometimes referred to as reference (a thing or set of things in the world) and sense (a summary formula)” (Pinker 282). In other words, reference is what the object is actually and sense is what we perceive the object to be in our head. In most cases, the sense and reference of a word are the same, but it all depends on a person’s perception of sense and reference of word. For example, if another person and I are talking about a dog and I think that it is a Golden Retriever and the other person thinks it is a Yellow Lab, we both have the same reference, but we have different references of what the object is.
Another concept covered in Pinker’s book The Stuff of Thought is language acquisition. Language acquisition is the way that we learn and acquire our language. Everyone knows that babies cannot speak. But how do they pick up and learn a language such as English? At some point they learn the language and eventually become proficient in it. There are many theories presented in Pinker’s book on how we acquire language. One of the theories is that we acquire language through imitating people we hear speaking the language. Pinker opposes this belief and says, “To become so fluent in a language, children must have analyzed the speech around them, not just memorize it” (Pinker, 28). What Pinker is saying is that instead of just memorizing words in the language, we have to think critically about the language and understand why there a certain rules and concepts instead of just memorizing words and phrases. Pinker says that children imitate but hey also generalize language. If children only imitated what was said by their parents, they would not be able to formulate new ideas and concepts within the language. I found this to be particularly true in high school when I took Spanish for four years. Before taking Spanish class, the only language that I have ever known was English. Over those four years of taking Spanish classes, I found it very difficult to acquire the language and be able to proficiently speak the language. I found myself a lot of the times just trying to memorize words and phrases so I would have something to write down during the written test or say during the verbal speak test. In the short term, it probably helped me to know some words and phrases for the test, but in the long run, I have lost most of the knowledge that I have learned from taking the classes. If I were have to thought analytically and really think about the concepts of the language, I know I would have done better in my Spanish classes and definitely would have been more proficient in the Spanish language. In Chapter 8 of Pinker’s book The Stuff of Thought titled Games People Play, he talk about indirect speech and how we do not say directly what we want to say and how we say things in such an indirect way. When talking with others,