Language Instinct or Language Myth?

Our brains and bodies are language ready, Dr. Vyvyan Evans, Professor of Linguistics at Wales' Bangor University, acknowledges, but do we have a language instinct as Dr. Noam Chomsky, "the father of modern linguistics," and the received wisdom maintains? 

The evidence is compelling declares Prof. Evans, whose research focuses on cognitive linguistics. The title of his latest book, published by Cambridge University Press, conveys his verdict: The Language Myth: Why Language Is Not an Instinct. He delineates his case in a recent issue of Aeon.

By Jeeves, It's Wodehouse!

The quintessential English humorist P.G. Wodehouse was “the oldest of old boys,” as Robert Messenger aptly notes in his New Criterion review of an anthology of Wodehouse's letters. Little wonder then that my appetite for his witty offerings were insatiable in my college days when I was the youngest of the good ol' boys. Wodehouse charmed as a writer with his self-deprecation, as Ronald Reagan would do decades later as an orator. Indeed, P.G. never lost the insouciance of his British stiff upper lip. Would that I could say the same. What I can say is that we all could use some mirth-inspiring P.G. humor today.

Hybrid Hype

For modern theorists of technology, hybridity is ontological. They believe that to be human is to be technological. This seemingly innocent assumption has significant implications about how we think about morality, law, and politics. Perhaps this is what the Hybrid Age is all about: marketing masquerading as theory, charlatans masquerading as philosophers, a New Age cult masquerading as a university, business masquerading as redemption, and slogans masquerading as truths. The Naked and the TED

A Page Turner

"Lovers of ink and paper, take heart," the astute cyber critic Nicholas Carr writes in the Wall Street Journal. "Reports of the death of the printed book may be exaggerated." In proof of his premise, he notes that 9 out of 10 regular book readers report reading a printed book during the past year, while 70% did not read a single e-book. "There's something about a crisply printed, tightly bound book that we don't seem eager to let go of," Carr concludes.
Don't Burn Your Books - Print Is Here To Stay