M. Porcius Cato's Blog

*scratches head*

 

Steven Pinker is an interesting character. He has a way to make linguistics palatable and interesting to the average person; his Language Instinct is a perfect example. But he occasionally leaves out concepts not out of lack of knowledge, but out of entertainment. Make it more appealing to the common person, to so speak. I think the part he forgot to mention was that an oath is an active speech act...meaning, by repeating the oath, the person in question is not merely communicating but is actively doing something with the utterance. Pinker should have talked more about that...but that's just the linguist in me.