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.
The priceless heritage of our society is the unrestricted constitutional right of each member to think as he will. Thought control is a copyright of totalitarianism, and we have no claim to it.
It is Hell, of course, that makes priests powerful, not Heaven, for after thousands of years of so-called civilization fear remains the one common denominator of mankind
Sickness, insanity and death were the angels that surrounded my cradle and they have followed me throughout my life.
Life would go out in a 'fraction of a second' (that was the phrase), but all night he had been realizing that time depends on clocks and the passage of light. There were no clocks and the light wouldn't change. Nobody really knew how long a second of pain could be. It might last a whole purgatory--or for ever.
Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.
When Alexander the Great visited the philosopher Diogenes and asked whether he could do anything for him, Diogenes is said to have replied: βYes, stand a little less between me and the sun.β It is what every citizen is entitled to ask of his government.
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