[panglott]

"The Language Instinct" is almost 25 years old, and it has not fared well IMO, although linguistics is a multidisciplinary/multiparadigmatic field with lots of disagreement. That book was the result of cognitive psychology trying to grapple with Chomsky and generative grammar when they were at the height, and a dominant paradigm within linguistics. But the tide has been shifting away from Chomsky ever since. So the discussion of universal grammar, or the innateness of creole grammars, looks much weaker today.

An "interactional instinct" seems like a much better account of the forces at play in human language acquisition. https://www.scribd.com/document/60713747/Interactional-Insti...

"The Blank Slate" repulsed me by criticizing Boasian anthropology for its rejection of biological explanations for behavior while ignoring the deeply racist context of early 20th century science. The biological explanations that people like Boasian anthropologists were arguing against were pure scientific racism, the premise that the social behavior of "primitive" peoples was a consequence of their biological inferiority, during a time when biology had (for example) not definitely repudiated Lamarckism.

"The Sense of Style", however, looks like quite a good book.