In "The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window Into Human Nature," Pinker explores the complicated ways that language and thought relate to each other.
There have been at least 1,200 terms for the vagina in the history of the English language, according to Steven Pinker, a psychology professor at Harvard and the author of "The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature" (Viking, 2007).
Translating the slippery stuff of human language into binary values will always be an imperfect science, however.
There is none of that clunky "Edwards recalled in an interview," or "according to three independent sources" stuff — the sort of language that slows down the narrative but that most news organizations insist on for credibility.
On a basic level, a novel, unlike an epic or a myth, is essentially made up of the contingent stuff of life and language: turns of phrase, conversations, digressions, descriptions, subplots.
After that, and based on my experience with the other two books, I must've thought that by using this so-to-say speaking voice I could put into the book a lot of stuff — language, humor, seriousness, contemporary cultural artifact — that I wanted to represent in fiction and that seemed worth representing.
His book is cogently argued and impressively informed, but it is also needlessly convoluted, stuffed with pretentious shards of language and therefore annoyingly difficult to follow.
He's visiting the museum to lead two special workshops: "Dancing Hats, Glasses and Necklaces," on Saturday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., will deal with costumes that accompany music; "Normal Stuff: The Language of Everyday Objects," on Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., will focus on creative uses for ordinary things.
A lot of that tune's improvising -- by Mr. Marsalis, the alto saxophonist Wessell Anderson (with a slightly sharp, Eric Dolphy-intensitysity) and the pianist Eric Lewis -- is textural stuff, the language of trilled and warped notes, clusters and long tones, repetition and abstraction.
Disinterested instead of uninterested, problems instead of issues – all of that sort of stuff weakens the language, that's what concerns me.
