Linguistics, Style and Writing in the 21st Century - with Steven Pinker

Thanks to some linguistically gifted fans, we now have English and Spanish subtitles for this video. Many thanks and gracias!

"Avoids cliches like the plague" Love it.

I would never have thought that a lecture on linguistics might turn out to be so fascinatingly captivating and humorous

"There's nothing sinister or gauche about driving on the left." sinister - (Latin) on the left side gauche - (French) left Ya gotta listen carefully to get Pinker's jokes

"Bureaucracy speaks in gibberish to avoid responsibility." Sadly, this is true

I virtually admire Steven Pinker

I think there must be a lot of research done about Steven's fabulous hair.

37:21 there is a similar joke in Arabic I wonder if they have the same origin. the joke goes : people in prison who have nothing to pass their time tell jokes and they have memorize it all and numbered it so one goes 17 and they laughed another said 10 and they laughed another said 121 and they laughed but one of them continued to laugh for a long time they asked him why? he said this is the first time I hear this joke.

I think Mr. Pinker underestimates the problem of unclear thinking as a source of unclear writing.

23:18 "the passive voice is overused by academics" I see what you did there... :D

“Avoids clichés like the plague” Genius

Thank you for uploading this wonderful lecture! As an aspiring poet and writer whose mother tongue is not English, I have always had a lot of worries and doubts about the intricacies of English - this clarified a lot of things for me!

Prose for pros.

40:00 Au contraire, the Cookie Monster's signature line is "om nom nom nom" (and his usage is flawless).

This is excellent, I have one complaint which has nothing to do with writing and is so obscure that I don't blame Pinker for not knowing this, and using it as an example of something he thinks arbitrary: Driving on the left comes from the days of fencing. You pass a person on the right (i.e. walking on the left of the pavement) so that you can draw your sword and get on guard more quickly. That's also why, traditionally, if a couple are out together, the man walks on the woman's right hand side (with her on the far left of the path); should it occur, the man can then put the woman behind him with his left hand while drawing with his right in one step. If he's on her other side, it takes two paces to get into position. It's also why we mount horses from the left; the cavalry all have to go from the same side, or one man gets his neighbour's spurs in the face as they swing into the saddle. We'd already picked left, so left it is. America trained their cavalry to mount from whichever side has the higher ground, and the spacing issues of fencing weren't a consideration by then. So they arbitrarily picked the right to drive on. Other countries that drive on the right simply dropped the archaic traditions that predicated using the left historically. Archaic, but not arbitrary.

I usually use straight forward prose, but when you describe a thought or a dream it's not bad to go weird and abstract, and also grammaticly slightly weirder. Love you, Steven!

First rule of any writer: "know your audience".

This is the best advice on writing I've ever received. Pinker, you're the man.

This video came up in the recommendations, and I was hooked from the very first minute. What a captivating speaker !

Why am I watching a linguistics lecture at 2 f*ing AM in the morning?