![]() ![]() ![]() These trends, plus the curse of knowledge, make up what Pinker calls academese. In his talk, Pinker emphasized the importance of “classic” – conversational – style writing and lamented writers’ use of hallmarks like self-conscious apology, shudder quotes, and hedging to distance from or dilute a claim. His recently published pieces, “The Source of Bad Writing” in the Wall Street Journal, “Why Academics Stink at Writing” in the Chronicle of Higher Education, and “Passive Resistance: The active voice isn’t always the best choice” in The Atlantic. Pinker’s book has been reviewed widely, in The New York Times, the New Yorker, the Wall Street Journal, and Scientific American. Pinker’s thesis should have myriad implications for writing at the translation of science to the general public, and neuroscience to law. Rather than moaning about the decline of the language, carping over pet peeves, or recycling spurious edicts from the rulebooks of a century ago, he applies insights from the sciences of language and mind to the challenge of crafting clear, coherent, and stylish prose. In his most recent entertaining and instructive book, Pinker rethinks the usage guide for the 21st century. ![]() He is widely published for his visual cognition and the psychology of language, and has been recognized for his research, teaching, and writing. Currently Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, Pinker has also taught at Stanford and MIT. ![]() Steven Pinker is an experimental psychologist and one of the world’s foremost writers on language, mind, and human nature. ![]()
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