A reflection on Pinker's reading

When I finished reading Pinker’s readings about language and the brain, I felt I totally agreed what Pinker said in his hypothesis. From what my learning in psychology class, there is a specific area in our brain that controls our ability of speaking and language. So language is a functional skill involved in brain that it is endogenously generated.

But after the debate in our tutorial class, I changed some of my mind that language is not absolutely innate and can be influenced by other factors. One is the environment, like the opposition group mentioned Genie in our textbook, she was locked in an empty, darkness room without any human contact. What I think is that even this girl has the instinct of language, the environment around her don’t let her talk. It is possible that her ability of speaking will regressive until she can’t speak any more. The same as the “wild boy”, who lives in the wild and recognizes his parents are animals. With no human contact environment, our language may disappear. The other one is about culture. Although Pinker said, “ Language is not a culture invention.” we can’t ignore what culture affects on us. Why were Canadian born to speak English while Chinese born to speak Chinese? Because of the different cultures in two countries. That’s why we have thousands kinds of languages in our world. On the other hand, language is sort of the culture builder. Culture is learned and shared patterns of behaviors and beliefs. If people don’t have the same language, how can they communicate and share their thoughts and beliefs? So, I think language and culture are supplements to each other.

In my opinion, the instinct indicates that we have the ability to speak but the other factors that affect can develop our language.