Steven Pinker, leading cognitive scientist and author of ""The Stuff of Thought,"" attracted a full house Sunday night at the Wisconsin Union Theater as he spoke about language as a window into human nature.
Pinker appeared as a part of the Distinguished Lecture Series.
Those who attended Sunday night listened attentively as Pinker explained many aspects of human thought and action through examples that had the audience roaring in laughter.
""I'm going to give you the view from language, what kind of insight we can gain to thought, emotion and social relations from words and how we use them,"" Pinker said.
Pinker began by speaking about language as understood through geometry. He explained geometry in language and made sense of it by looking at examples of nouns, prepositions and other parts of speech.
He also looked at what he called ""Crazy English."" For example, he questioned ""why is it called ‘after dark' when it is really ‘after light.""
Pinker went on to describe language in terms of space and time, cognition and emotion.
""I understand the language of swearing, it helps some people to think of the cognitive neuroscience, what happens in the brain when a person produces a taboo word,"" Pinker said. ""The first generalization is the taboo words activate brain areas associated with negative emotion.""
Finally, Pinker gave an example of indecency on television and the way words are construed in our language as a result of emotion.
He referenced the live coverage at the Golden Globe Awards in 2003 when the lead singer of U2 used profanity in his acceptance speech. Pinker said there was conflict when the Federal Communications Commission allowed the profane word to be aired on national television.
Pinker was recently named as one of TIME magazine's 100 Most Influential People in The World.
