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Language vs. Reality: Why Language Is Good for Lawyers and Bad for Scientists
A fascinating examination of how we are both played by language and made by the science underlying the bugs and features of humankind’s greatest invention.
Language is said to be humankind’s greatest accomplishment. But what is language actually good for? It performs poorly at representing reality. It is a constant source of distraction, misdirection, and overshadowing. In fact, N. J. Enfield notes, language is far better at persuasion than it is at objectively capturing the facts of experience. Language cannot create or change physical reality, but it can do the next best reframe and invert our view of the world. In Language vs. Reality , Enfield explains why language is bad for scientists (who are bound by reality) but good for lawyers (who want to win their cases), why it can be dangerous when it falls into the wrong hands, and why it deserves our deepest respect.
Enfield offers a lively exploration of the science underlying the bugs and features of language. He examines the tenuous relationship between language and reality; details the array of effects language has on our memory, attention, and reasoning; and describes how these varied effects power narratives and storytelling as well as political spin and conspiracy theories. Why should we care what language is good for? Enfield, who has spent twenty years at the cutting edge of language research, argues that understanding how language works is crucial to tackling our most pressing challenges, including human cognitive bias, media spin, the “post-truth” problem, persuasion, the role of words in our thinking, and much more.
Language is said to be humankind’s greatest accomplishment. But what is language actually good for? It performs poorly at representing reality. It is a constant source of distraction, misdirection, and overshadowing. In fact, N. J. Enfield notes, language is far better at persuasion than it is at objectively capturing the facts of experience. Language cannot create or change physical reality, but it can do the next best reframe and invert our view of the world. In Language vs. Reality , Enfield explains why language is bad for scientists (who are bound by reality) but good for lawyers (who want to win their cases), why it can be dangerous when it falls into the wrong hands, and why it deserves our deepest respect.
Enfield offers a lively exploration of the science underlying the bugs and features of language. He examines the tenuous relationship between language and reality; details the array of effects language has on our memory, attention, and reasoning; and describes how these varied effects power narratives and storytelling as well as political spin and conspiracy theories. Why should we care what language is good for? Enfield, who has spent twenty years at the cutting edge of language research, argues that understanding how language works is crucial to tackling our most pressing challenges, including human cognitive bias, media spin, the “post-truth” problem, persuasion, the role of words in our thinking, and much more.
312 pages, Hardcover
First published March 29, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
January 19, 2023
Claims to be built in evolutionary psychology yet omits the key theory/mechanism/empirical evidence of those that built evolutionary psychology of language: Donald, Suddendorf, Knight, MacNielage. So the book is a feint that operates only a social theory of language without getting into the nitty-gritty: language is developed in deception, uses arbitrary metaphors as its base: words, and can almost never create agency at large or horizontal scales unless it's branded as misinformation/propaganda. The book is schizophrenic between its theory, which accepts language as fait accompli, and the evidence amassed. Ignores the challenges in good signaling of a metaphor-symbol-referent-representation whirlpool of confusion we're operating, something Cassirer got to the heart of in the 1920s. Has nothing to say about the possibilities for concatenation and self-organizing languages. This book was theoretically out of date 20 years ago using cutting edge citations, and now that we're nearing the E for extinction point of no-return, is simply here to blind us to our inability to communicate. Seoboek, Frege, Lakoff? This is ancient linguistic research comparatively. Where's Fauconnaire, where's Halliday? Fontaine? Gets two stars for empirical research in omitted parts.
Omen: Beware of any book claiming that scientists "need to be better lawyers."
Now, when the book arrives to its stories chapter, the book really veers off course, which suffers from storytelling about stories, instead traffics in false universals "usually" concerns protagonists of x age, almost always deals with x...the nadir is the statement "Stories are made from words" which is like saying "astrology is made from words". No, stories are not made from words, stories are made from event perceptions organized largely through our prefrontal cortex. At the same time he offers no evolutionary analysis, instead trafficking in the same neurotransmitter arguments that are the current vogue, "feel good" transmitters. He also amasses the statistical arguments from gathered folktales to get a generalist's view of average ingredients to base stories. This is ye olde formula science traffics in: "there are x# of basic stories among us" which is more trees for the forest analysis. Again, no. Stories are evolutionary products of our prey-predator system certified by our use of oxytocin, which is a transmitter that promotes sensations of completion, not simply feel good. Let's be clear, oxytocin originates in muscle contraction, not in partum contraction. This is misleading.
Strange that one of the best discussions of the illusions of language and stories neither can complete the arguments with available missing link evidence, nor summarize these are extinction-level threats: that existing language and the way we use it in narrative keeps us in hamsterwheel conflict and bias unable to make risk-behavioral change to solve extinction.
Omen: Beware of any book claiming that scientists "need to be better lawyers."
Now, when the book arrives to its stories chapter, the book really veers off course, which suffers from storytelling about stories, instead traffics in false universals "usually" concerns protagonists of x age, almost always deals with x...the nadir is the statement "Stories are made from words" which is like saying "astrology is made from words". No, stories are not made from words, stories are made from event perceptions organized largely through our prefrontal cortex. At the same time he offers no evolutionary analysis, instead trafficking in the same neurotransmitter arguments that are the current vogue, "feel good" transmitters. He also amasses the statistical arguments from gathered folktales to get a generalist's view of average ingredients to base stories. This is ye olde formula science traffics in: "there are x# of basic stories among us" which is more trees for the forest analysis. Again, no. Stories are evolutionary products of our prey-predator system certified by our use of oxytocin, which is a transmitter that promotes sensations of completion, not simply feel good. Let's be clear, oxytocin originates in muscle contraction, not in partum contraction. This is misleading.
Strange that one of the best discussions of the illusions of language and stories neither can complete the arguments with available missing link evidence, nor summarize these are extinction-level threats: that existing language and the way we use it in narrative keeps us in hamsterwheel conflict and bias unable to make risk-behavioral change to solve extinction.
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August 17, 2022My interview with Nick Enfield on "Language vs. Reality" for The Armen Show:
Nick Enfield: Language vs. Reality
Nick Enfield: Language vs. Reality
March 21, 2023
A pretty good summary of the issue. If you read a lot in the area you may not find a lot that's new.
August 28, 2024
If you like Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language, you'll love this one too. Full of fascinating anecdotes summarizing the latest research in how languages display constrained diversity, squeezing just enough of the salient facts of an impossibly complex world, just enough so that people can coordinate their actions.
How and why do languages decide which colors to name, or which plants and animals are important enough to label, or of the trillions of possible smells pick the ones that will get special attention?
There are two competing tensions, between trying to describe the world as accurately as possible, and coordinating/convincing others of some aspects you want to emphasize: "The scientist seeks to know the truth, but the lawyer seeks to persuade."
This is an easy, worthwhile read for anyone interested in a language.
How and why do languages decide which colors to name, or which plants and animals are important enough to label, or of the trillions of possible smells pick the ones that will get special attention?
There are two competing tensions, between trying to describe the world as accurately as possible, and coordinating/convincing others of some aspects you want to emphasize: "The scientist seeks to know the truth, but the lawyer seeks to persuade."
This is an easy, worthwhile read for anyone interested in a language.
July 4, 2022
Very accessible and overall fascinating. The conclusion is a disappointment--we must pay close attention to language to do better! But the book is about language being good at creating social realities, and it's not clear to me how expects people to agree on what "better" would mean in contexts where they are re-framing something to their advantage. It's the challenge of post-modernism, perhaps. Totally convincing about the importance and power of language and metaphors and stories but not clear how we can be sure that they will be used responsibly, including by ourselves.
May 28, 2025
I asked AI what I should read and gave it a number of nonfiction topics I was interested in. It suggested this book, which proved to be a great recommendation. It describes exactly what the title suggests: how inadequate language is for precise purposes. The differences in color descriptions between languages are especially impressive, as is the fact that the number of color words pales in comparison to the number of colors the human eye can discern. Of course, lawyers of any kind are trained to exploit these linguistic discrepancies to their advantage. Fascinating.
September 21, 2022
A good analysis of the biases of languages to remember that languages are to reality what maps are to the world: a representation, an interpretation, but not the real thing. And the way the representation is oriented says more about the descriptor than about reality self. Really interesting.
November 26, 2024
like a seafarer’s guide into unknown waters, this book forewarns of the dangers belying language and tells how one might face and navigate around them.
possibly, one of the most important books i have read in my life.
possibly, one of the most important books i have read in my life.
February 19, 2025
Lucidly written, compelling, and thoroughly researched, this is an important look at how languages originate, how they nudge our thoughts and behaviors, and how to be wary in light of the fact that words “are the mind’s off switch.” This should required reading for all college students.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews