In this book, Steven Pinker explains how the mind works by examining the way we use words. Every time we curse, we reveal something about human emotions. Whenever we make insinuations to bribe, threaten, or flirt with someone instead of telling them clearly what we want, we reveal something about human relationships. The use of prepositions and verb tenses paradoxically exploits human concepts of space and time, while nouns and verbs utilize cognitive models of matter and causality. Even the names we give to our children have important things to say about our relationships with them and society. By focusing on our everyday speech in our conversations, jokes, legal disputes, Pinker provides a vivid picture of the thoughts and emotions that inhabit our mental world. He argues that human thoughts, from political positions and religious beliefs to advertising gimmicks and comics, are organized around certain basic ideas, such as space, power, dominance, kinship, and contamination. He invites us to look around us and realize that the metaphors we use every day are based on these very primary concepts. And he wonders how we develop these categories as children, how we apply them to the world around us, and what happens when we do it in the wrong ways. Pinker addresses scientific issues - such as how language influences thought and which of our concepts are innate - as well as issues from newspaper headlines and everyday life: Why do romantic comedies exploit people's ambiguous conversations on their first dates so much? Why do we try to "butter up" someone discreetly, being careful with our words? Why are the state and public opinion so sensitive to hypocrisy? And why are unwanted electronic messages called spam? In this book, Pinker presents completely new material, written in the style that has made his previous books famous worldwide: clear explanations of profound issues, delivered with wit, humor, elegance, and mastery in selecting examples from popular culture and everyday life.