Communication · Media

Language

The system of meaning that makes humans human — and how the languages we speak shape the thoughts we can think.

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Books
Book

The Language Instinct — Steven Pinker

Language as a biological adaptation — how we all come pre-wired to speak. The definitive popular account.

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Understanding Media — Marshall McLuhan

McLuhan in 1964 told you what would happen — the medium becomes the message, the global village forms, the inner life gets externalised. Reread it now and feel sixty years of prophecy collapse into description.

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People
Person

Steven Pinker

Harvard cognitive scientist whose Language Instinct (1994) made Chomsky's universal-grammar argument legible to general readers. Has since written eight more books arguing for an Enlightenment view of human reason.

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Tools & media
Tool

Duolingo

The world's most popular language learning app. Gamified, free, and genuinely effective for building habits.

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Ethnologue

The definitive catalogue of the world's 7,000+ languages. Their speakers, status, and family trees.

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Language is the dress of thought. — Samuel Johnson