38 pages • 1 hour read
Steven PinkerA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Steven Pinker opens with a declaration of love for style manuals, which he finds both useful and enjoyable to read—especially as a cognitive scientist interested in how language works. He cites William Strunk and E. B. White’s The Elements of Style as a classic in the genre, but notes that the authors’ keen sense of style was combined with an imperfect grasp of grammar. Moreover, like many other style guides, Elements gave advice that contradicted linguistic science and treated language as unchanging. As a result, Pinker notes, the advice of even the most engaging style manuals can be needlessly restrictive. A fear of change leads some style guide writers to reject new words or embrace the notion that the language is being degraded by the younger generation. Yet, as Pinker demonstrates, that concern has been constant throughout much of written history, and many of the changes deplored by earlier writers are deemed unexceptionable by their later counterparts.
By Steven Pinker
Enlightenment Now
Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress
Steven Pinker
How The Mind Works
How The Mind Works
Steven Pinker
The Better Angels of Our Nature
The Better Angels of Our Nature
Steven Pinker
The Blank Slate
The Blank Slate
Steven Pinker
The Language Instinct
The Language Instinct
Steven Pinker