Steven Pinker believes that language is not an artifact, but it is a skill. To Pinker, a child doesn’t need formal teaching to obtain the language of the household. A child learns from the conversations that occur around them. The brain will process the conversation and enable the child to speak the words that he/she hears. In his book, The Language Instinct, Pinker says that language is instinctive and because of how the human brain works we are able to speak. Pinker also describes language as an “instinct” because it gives off the idea that people know how to talk just like “…spiders know how to spin webs” (pg. 5). Language isn’t learned, it’s just a natural thing. Pinker said, “But I prefer the admittedly quaint term ‘instinct’. It conveys the idea that people know how to talk…” (pg. 5). Pinker’s comparison between humans knowing how to speak and spiders knowing how to spin webs is brilliant because spiders aren’t taught how to spin webs, they just do. We as humans aren’t taught how to speak, we just do. The cerebral cortex is a special part of that brain gives us the ability to speak and communicate. A child does not need a teacher to learn how to speak because the cerebral cortex will pick up on words and give the child the ability to say those words.
Pinker’s argument is valid due to his view of language being an instinctive action. His statement makes a lot of sense because language isn’t something that we’re taught at a young age. We learn from listening to our parents and other people talk. Parents don’t sit down and teach their infant how to say a word because the more the infant hears the words, the more he/she starts to understand it. The childhood years are the most critical years for learning and since an infant’s brain is really developed, it will take the child a while to be able to speak. Language is an innate thing and there’s no other way around it. Pinker’s argument is just as sound as it is valid because of all the reasons that I just stated. While growing up, humans learn many things such as how to add or how to eat or how to act, but instinct is one thing that can’t be taught. Language is one hundred percent inbred in humans just like spinning webs is inbred in spiders. NIKE has a slogan that says, “Just Do It” and that’s how man is when it comes to language, we just do it because it’s natural.
