Pinker does a fine job of being entertaining and of making linguistics sound
interesting; I would not dispute that. But his gross exagerrations and ridiculous claims are simply
unnecessary, akin to the political ideologue who has a point and then pushes it to the hilt. It's
all or nothing with the ideologue, and the same goes for Pinker.

This book would have been
no less entertaining if Pinker had screened out the claims he knows are suspect or false. Some
positive reviewers seem to be insinuating that the "thought-criticisms" of us lowly experts and
interested laymen should be shunted aside: what's _really_ important is how _interesting_ he makes
linguistics!

Compare this to a book on physics. Suppose, in his famous 1962-63 lectures,
Feynman had made a bunch of outrageous and sometimes false claims about the "state of the art" in
physics. Physicists would be up in arms as these lectures were eventually made into popular intros
to physics. I can imagine people like the below poo-pooing those physicists because the issue isn't
accuracy but how _fun_ Feynman had made physics.

Perhaps this is all postmodernism at work.
The text has no value on its own, and facts exist only for the individual. Well, bring on the dark
ages, please.

Read this book... be entertained... learn that a linguist is not "someone who
knows many languages," and that there's no such thing as a "primitive" human language... But
please, take it all with a grain of salt.

(From someone who doesn't make a penny from
alleged "grants" or anything else remotely involved with linguistics. Not that non-Chomskyans need
it, since they're the ones who usually get the grant before the Chomskyans, for better or
worse.)

P.S.: And Pinker is _not_ a linguist! What's wrong with you people? He's a cognitive
psychologist with a fetish for his colleague's (Chomsky's) profession. There is a difference. Jeez.

If you've wished you'd taken linguistics, and never did, get this book.
This one book will do it for you! Pinker is intelligent, but more importantly is a master of
illustrative examples for the layperson. However, the text is never "dumbed-down" and can be a
challenge to any reader.

I've read some of the other readers' reviews... unfortunately some focus
more on applying academic thought-criticisims of his nativist viewpoint. Certainly, if you are
coming from an academic bent, yes, I would agree that it would be a gross misrepresentation to say
that Pinker presents the definitive state of the art in linguistics, or that all linguists think
like he does... in fact, the critical reviewers are right, Pinker is but one linguist in one
theoretical camp, the "nativist" camp, i.e. the theory that genes drive language and its
acquisition in a task-specific manner. But so what? Pinker's theory is not what drives enjoyment
of the book; it's the enthusiasm and skill with which he can introduce any reader to the topic of
the study of language! : It's not dry! It's fun!

His viewpoint is already apparent by the
title; the true value of this gem of a book is for introducing to the layperson LINGUISTICS and the
depth of the kinds of questions that can be asked about language... these questions can be
"beautiful," and certainly most readers would not have thought of these issues themselves, yet
after Pinker's examples, it all makes wonderful sense, and is memorable and lucid. Whether or not
the reader agrees with Pinker after becoming sophisticated upon further readings is not relevant;
without The Language Instinct, Pinker's engaging introduction to the field, many would never wish
to become linguistically sophisticated in the first place!

The sort of reader who should pay
attention to the specific thought-criticisms of some of the other reviewers should really be
elsewhere, reading and critiquing Pinker's academic works, e.g. journal articles, or his book
"Language Learnability and Language Development," not nitpicking a book meant for introducing the
masses to the beauty of language! If you aren't a linguist, I would hazard that the majority of
potential readers are safe to completely ignore these thought-criticisms when pondering their
potential enjoyment of purchasing this book from Amazon.

These critical reviewers should be
reading/writing journal articles in the academic literature! However if you are in the grey area
of reading this book for an academic reason not strictly defined as Linguistics, these specific
thought-criticisms are valid to take note of and to consider-- I would concede that some niches of
academics (e.g. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh of chimpanzee artificial language) may be taking The Language
Instinct text, a book for the layperson, as an academic gospel of the entire field of Linguistics,
without really considering the underlying technical issues or counterarguments.

Overall, you
likely won't find another book which presents the beauty & complexity of language with the ease of
The Language Instinct. If you are to have but one book in your library on language, this should be
the one.

And it speaks *beautifully*. If you're not professionally
involved in the more technical aspects of the debates explored here, if you couldn't care less
about ending sentences with prepositions but don't know why others would, and you have a pulse,
you're bound to enjoy this brilliant introduction to linguistics, which also illustrates
fascinating points about literature, neurology, genetics, evolution, class systems, history,
children, baseball and crossword puzzles. (whew.) Rife with pop culture references (who could quote
Dorothy Parker, Dan Quayle, Bob Dylan and Shakespeare successfully but this man, who admits to
loving the word "diss" and disliking "whom"?), this book will keep you from reading your next few
copies of both Reader's Digest and the New Yorker; you could even toss the Bach tapes you play for
your 4-year-olds and just read them this at bedtime. And, you know, that's a good thing.

"I have
never met a person who is not interested in language," Dr. Pinker begins. No other instinct more
steadily binds us and defines us as human, and no other book has poured so much cool information
into such spellbinding writing as this one. Dr. Pinker, take another bow. There are roses waiting
in the green room.