Kacie Kondrotis
Professor Goodwin
9/15/14

Words Don’t Mean What They Mean

Steven Pinker, a psychology professor at Harvard University, is the author of “Words Don’t Mean What They Mean”. He argues that there are many categories in which people transfer information and progress to settle that relation. He expresses that phrases convey meanings in the context being used and how this can help or decrease communication between humans. Pinker declares that our language is used through many different variations. From “sexual come-ons”(p.113), which note the phrase “would you like to come up and see my etchings?”(p.113) to the veiled threat that is told within a certain set of words. Pinker declares a veiled threat as if a “Mafia”(p.113) guy wants to offer protection and says, “nice store you got there. Would be a real shame if something happened to it.”(p.113) Which then leads Pinker to discuss the reality of “why don’t people just say what they mean?”(p.113) His discussions sum up to the fact that when humans speak to each other it’s because we have some sort of familiarity with them and each sentence you speak “conveys a message and continues to negotiate that relationship”(p.113). Pinker describes it most similar to “ordinary politeness”(p.113) or more clearly written as when we want the salt at dinner. If you want to seem rational and polite you would say “gimme the salt”(p.113), humans change the language to, as Pinker calls it, a “wimperative”(p.113) that creates the language “do you think you could pass the salt?”(p.113) Language between people changes based on the relationship, and when we are around our friends or even a “police officer” our language changes. Pinker writes that as the relationship changes so does our level of politeness. Humans have different levels of language and this specific one creates a goal in the language that tries to