You can't hear a word and just hear it as raw sound; it always evokes an associated meaning and emotion in the brain.
Interpretation
Words carry deeper meanings and emotional connections that go beyond mere sound.
In this quote, Steven Pinker emphasizes that language is not just a collection of sounds; rather, each word invokes specific meanings and emotions in our minds. This inherent connection between sound and sentiment illustrates the complex nature of human communication, where context, experiences, and feelings influence our understanding of spoken language.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of effective communication, you might reference this quote to illustrate how words affect our feelings.
The foundation of individual rights is the assumption that people have wants and needs and are authorities on what those wants and needs are. If people's stated desires were just some kind of erasable inscription or reprogrammable brainwashing, any atrocity could be justified.
The linguistic clumsiness of tourists and students might be the price we pay for the linguistic genius we displayed as babies, just as the decrepitude of age in the price we pay for the vigor of youth.
If we are not to abandon values such as peace and equality, or our commitments to science and truth, then we must pry these values away from claims about our psychological makeup that are vulnerable to being proven false.
We adults protect ourselves with laws, police, workplace regulations and social norms and there is no conceivable reason why children should be left more vulnerable, other that laziness or callousness in considering what life is like from their point of view.
The idea that children are passive repositories to be shaped by their parents has been massively overstated. A child's peer group is a far greater determinant of its development and achievements than parental aspiration.
Reason is non-negotiable. Try to argue against it, or to exclude it from some realm of knowledge, and you've already lost the argument, because you're using reason to make your case. ... We don't "believe" in reason.
Satan can make men dance upon the brink of hell as though they were on the verge of heaven.
True beauty is not related to what color your hair is or what color your eyes are. True beauty is about who you are as a human being, your principles, your moral compass.
When you have power, that's your confessional booth - you can go in there and confess and be cleaned of all sins. If the fight isn't going your way, but you land a big punch, the fight is different from that point on.
The worker is the slave of capitalist society, the female worker is the slave of that slave.
I don't want what I am saying to sound like a prophecy or anything like an analysis of modern society... these are only feelings I have, and I am the least speculative man on earth.
It has had a calamitous effect on converted peoples. To be converted you have to destroy your past, destroy your history. You have to stamp on it, you have to say 'my ancestral culture does not exist, it doesn't matter'.
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