203 | N.J. Enfield on Why Language is Good for Lawyers and Not Scientists

Linguist N.J. Enfield, in conversation with Sean Carroll, argues that language evolved to serve social ends—persuasion, coordination, justification—rather than accurate description of reality. This fundamental mismatch explains why ordinary language works well enough for lawyers and negotiators but becomes treacherous for scientists. Enfield traces how words operate as good-enough optimization solutions: we need only enough precision to distinguish a red car from others in view, not to capture the physics of electromagnetic wavelengths. The structure of language itself reflects these social origins. It reduces experience in two stages—first from physical reality to the narrow visible spectrum our senses perceive, then again from roughly two million distinguishable colors down to a handful of basic color terms—yet remains perfectly adequate for its cultural purposes.

The conversation moves through several domains where this bias matters. Enfield examines how the very grammar we choose reshapes reasoning: a cardiac emergency framed as "tell me what's happened" (present perfect) versus "what happened" (simple past) changes which details people attend to and can alter ambulance dispatch times. He draws on Communication as Influence theory to argue that language is entirely normative, designed to act upon others rather than mirror reality neutrally. The episode explores Linguistic Relativity more carefully than popular versions allow, examining concrete cases—deaf communities spontaneously generating sign language, colonial contact languages crystallizing into Creoles—that show how language birth and Schelling Coordination Problem dynamics shape what words mean. A recurring theme is that once we satisfice on a label, we stop questioning it, treating words as "off switches for the mind" rather than as constructions we might inspect and revise.