FREE ESSAY ON LANGUAGE: INSTINCTIVE OR LEARNED?

LANGUAGE: INSTINCTIVE OR LEARNED?

Language: Instinctive or Learned?
Over the course of time the topic of language has been a catalyst for many discussions
and debates as to if it is learned throughout one's life, or is it a hard copy instinct
the one is born with. Many scientists and writers in the humanities field have their own
opinions as to what they believe about language and its plight in human society. One
writer challenges many of our educators and scholars today by expressing his thoughts on
the instinct to understand, learn, and speak language.
In The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language, Steven Pinker maintains that
language is not something that we learn like the way we learn how to tell time or learn
about the presidents. Rather, Pinker suggests that the essence of language is already
with us when we are brought into the world. You see this when Pinker argues, "Instead, it
is a distinct piece of the biological makeup of our brain"(4). He uses metaphors and
similes to further qualify his arguments. Pinker compares the idea that people know how
to talk in the same sense that spiders know how to spin webs. The activity or practice of
spinning webs was not invented by any one spider, but rather is an instinctive quality
that spiders have much like humans and language. Pinker goes on to comment that a young
child's knowledge of language and grammar is more refined than any artificial language
system used by any advanced technology computer aided programs. 
Pinker's views that he establishes about language are in accordance with other notable
figures in the humanities field. A man by the name of Noam Chomsky has views that are
representative of the point Pinker is trying to convey: language is a biological makeup
of the brain. As a professor of linguistics at MIT, Chomsky imparted sound arguments as
to the nature of language. Chomsky has suggested the fact that every sentence that a
human speaks or comprehends is an original combination of words that has not been voiced
before. Therefore, language is not a learned trait that has an extensive gamut of
expressions, but rather the brain must contain a "hard drive" that can fabricate an
unlimited set of sentences from a limited amount of words. He also strongly feels that
children are inherently equipped with the ability to cull the syntactic patterns of
speech from their parents. We can see this when a young infant begins to babble at the
youngest of ages. This furthermore qualifies and represents Pinker's views on the idea
that language is instinctive.
On the other side of the coin, there are those educated people that have different views
and opinions about language than Pinker suggests, most of these being elementary and
secondary English and grammar teachers. It is their obligation to teach young children
and adolescence the proper syntax structure, pronunciation, and spelling of words. So it
is only the nature of their profession for these teachers to firmly believe that
language, of course, is a learned capacity. Just the way they learn that 2+2=4 and George
Washington was the first President of the United States. But Pinker is trying to convince
the ignorant that these opinions are wrong and language is not math problem or a history
fact that we learn, but a rather an instinctive knowledge. 
The different views and opinions of the nature language will be discussed for time to
come. Can there be some duality to language? Can it be both instinctive and learned, or
does it have to be one or the other? It will be interesting to see if these questions can
be answered. Maybe then will we see what is the origin of language. Personally, I still
do not surely or firmly have a view or a belief to this topic, but I am leaning a certain
way. So I leave you with a quote from Oscar Wilde that I read which also appears in
Pinker's book. Oscar Wilde comments, "Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to
remember from time to time that nothing worth knowing can be taught."
Bibliography
Pinker, Steven. The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language: Harper-Collins.
New York, 1994.