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If you haven’t heard of Steven Pinker, you will. Pinker, a shaggy, prototypically-rumpled Harvard professor, is gathering his thoughts (And the stuff of them, I suppose) on language, how it’s structured, how it works for humans, and how in its crazed confusion reveals the nature of human thought, emotion, interaction and intention.  The inborn frames of our language, Pinker contends, use prepositions, nouns, verbs, etc. to shape and inform both our inner lives and our relation to society.

I am far from understanding this; I plan to read a couple of his books, especially the most recent, The Stuff of Thought, to try and do a late catch-up. You should try him too, if only for his insightful (and colorfully spoken) exposition of the role of swearing and how it reflects and shapes our...again with the dualism...inner and outer lives.

Read more about Steven Pinker in…
Slate Wikipedia TED AllInTheMind NY Times