The Language Instinct: How The Mind Creates Language, by Steven Pinker

As an aspiring writer (and, I may add, perspiring), books on language are always of interest. On every 'serious' writer's bookshelf, you expect to find a dictionary, a thesauras, perhaps a few books on quotations - and the quintessentials that every editor tells writers to have. If you're a writer, you know. You also probably know that quite a few of these books simply sit there, unattended, biding time and perpetuating an aura of 'writism'. But how many books actually explain how language has evolved? Surely this should be important to anyone who speaks or writes a language. This is also of importance to software developers and other IT professionals who are interested in accessibility of information: How better to make something accessible than to understand how humans will use it?

This book does just that. Steven Pinker, the Peter de Florez Professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, narrates various studies and history of not only language but human communication. He dispells a few myths with case studies, and forges into the uncharted areas of English, where only Mavens dare tread - and tread only upon common agreement. In fact, in Chapter 12, he writes:

...The legislators of "correct English", in fact, are an informal network of copy-editors, dictionary usage panelists, style manual and handbook writers, English teachers, essayists, columnists and pundits...

I think he failed to mention the marketers, but that's splitting hairs.

This book is invaluable for understanding how well we understand how we understand each other (a sentence which will make many cringe). It's a book that discusses what we know about communication, it's history with mankind, and how we communicate now. If you buy it, don't let it sit on your bookshelf unattended. Read it. You'll come away better for it.