Avram Noam Chomsky ( ; born December 7, 1928) is
an American linguist, philosopher,
cognitive scientist,
political activist, author, and lecturer.
He is an
Institute Professor and
professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology
. Chomsky is well known in the academic and
scientific community as one of the
fathers of
modern
linguistics. Since the 1960s, he
has become known more widely as a
political dissident, an
anarchist, and a
libertarian socialist intellectual.
Chomsky is often viewed as a notable figure in
contemporary philosophy.
In the 1950s, Chomsky began developing his theory of
generative grammar, which has undergone
numerous revisions and has had a profound influence on
linguistics. His approach to the study of
language emphasizes "an innate set of linguistic principles shared
by all humans" known as
universal
grammar, "the initial state of the language learner," and
discovering an "account for linguistic variation via the most
general possible mechanisms." He also established the
Chomsky hierarchy, a classification of
formal languages in terms of their
generative power. In 1959, Chomsky published a widely influential
review of
B. F. Skinner's
theoretical book
Verbal
Behavior, which was the first attempt by a
behaviorist to provide a functional,
operant analysis of language. Chomsky
used this review to broadly and aggressively challenge the
behaviorist approaches to studies of behavior
dominant at the time, and contributed to the
cognitive revolution in psychology. His
naturalistic approach to the study of language has influenced the
philosophy of language and
mind.
Beginning with his
opposition to the Vietnam
War, Chomsky established himself as a prominent critic of US
foreign and domestic policy. He is a self-declared adherent of
libertarian socialism which he
regards as "the proper and natural extension of
classical liberalism into the era of
advanced industrial society."
According to the
Arts
and Humanities Citation Index in 1992, Chomsky was cited as a
source more often than any other living scholar during the 1980–92
period, and was the eighth most-cited source. He is also considered
a prominent cultural figure. At the same time, his status as a
leading critic of
US
foreign policy has made him controversial.
Biography
Chomsky
was born on the morning of December 7, 1928 to Jewish parents in the East Oak Lane neighborhood of
Philadelphia
, Pennsylvania
, the son of a Hebrew
scholar and IWW
(Industrial Workers of the World) member, William Chomsky (1896–1977), a native of
Ukraine
. His mother, Elsie Chomsky (née Simonofsky), a
native of what is present-day Belarus
, grew up in
the United States and, unlike her husband, spoke "ordinary New York English." Their first
language was
Yiddish, but Chomsky
said it was "taboo" in his family to speak it. He describes his
family as living in a sort of "Jewish
ghetto," split into a "Yiddish side" and "Hebrew
side," with his family aligning with the latter and bringing him up
"immersed in Hebrew culture and literature." Chomsky also describes
tensions he personally experienced with
Irish Catholics and German Catholics and
anti-semitism in the mid-1930s. He
recalls German-American "Beer parties" celebrating the fall of
Paris to the Nazis
[3442]. In a discussion of the irony of his
staying in the 1980s in a Jesuit House in Central America, Chomsky
explained that during his childhood, "We were the only Jewish
family around. I grew up with a visceral fear of Catholics. They're
the people who beat you up on your way to school. So I knew when
they came out of that building down the street, which was the
Jesuit school, they were raving anti-Semites. So childhood memories
took a long time to overcome."
Chomsky
remembers the first article he wrote was at age 10 while a student
at Oak Lane Country
Day School
about the threat of the spread of fascism, following the fall of Barcelona in the
Spanish Civil War. From the
age of 12 or 13, he identified more fully with anarchist
politics.
A graduate
of Central High School of
Philadelphia
, Chomsky began studying philosophy and linguistics at the University of
Pennsylvania
in 1945, taking classes with philosophers such as
C. West Churchman and
Nelson Goodman and linguist
Zellig Harris. Harris's teaching included his
discovery of transformations as a
mathematical analysis of language
structure (mappings from one subset to another in the set of
sentences). Chomsky referred to the morphophonemic rules in his
1951 Master's Thesis,
The Morphophonemics of Modern
Hebrew, as transformations in the sense of
Carnap's 1938 notion of rules of
transformation (vs. rules of formation), and subsequently
reinterpreted the notion of grammatical transformations in a very
different way from Harris, as operations on the productions of a
context-free grammar (derived
from
Post production systems). Harris's
political views were instrumental in shaping those of Chomsky.
Chomsky earned a
BA in 1949 and an
MA in 1951.
In 1949, he married linguist
Carol
Schatz. They remained married for 59 years until her death from
cancer in December 2008. The couple had two daughters,
Aviva (b. 1957) and Diane (b. 1960), and a
son, Harry (b. 1967).
Chomsky
received his PhD in linguistics from the
University of
Pennsylvania in 1955. He conducted part of his doctoral research
during four years at Harvard University
as a Harvard
Junior Fellow. In his
doctoral thesis, he began to develop
some of his linguistic ideas, elaborating on them in his 1957 book
Syntactic Structures,
his best-known work in linguistics.
Chomsky
joined the staff of the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1955 and in 1961 was appointed full
professor in the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics
(now the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy). From
1966 to 1976 he held the Ferrari P. Ward Professorship of Modern
Languages and Linguistics, and in 1976 he was appointed Institute
Professor. As of 2008, Chomsky has taught at MIT continuously for
53 years.
In February 1967, Chomsky became one of the leading opponents of
the
Vietnam War with the publication of
his essay, "
The
Responsibility of Intellectuals", in
The New York Review of
Books. This was followed by his 1969 book,
American Power and the New
Mandarins, a collection of essays which established him at
the forefront of American dissent. His far-reaching criticisms of
US foreign policy and the legitimacy of US power have
made him a controversial figure:
largely shunned by the
mainstream media
in the United States, he is frequently sought out for his views by
publications and news outlets worldwide.
Chomsky has received death threats because of his criticisms of US
foreign policy. He was also on a list of planned targets created by
Theodore Kaczynski, better known
as the
Unabomber; during the period that
Kaczynski was at large, Chomsky had all of his mail checked for
explosives. He states that he often receives undercover police
protection, in particular while on the MIT campus, although he does
not agree with the police protection.
Chomsky
resides in Lexington
, Massachusetts
and travels often, giving lectures on
politics.
Contributions to linguistics
Chomskyan linguistics, beginning with his
Syntactic Structures,
a distillation of his
Logical Structure of Linguistic
Theory (1955, 75), challenges
structural linguistics and introduces
transformational grammar.
This theory takes utterances (sequences of words) to have a syntax
which can be characterized by a formal grammar; in particular, a
context-free grammar extended
with transformational rules.
Children are hypothesized to have an
innate knowledge of the basic
grammatical structure common to all human languages (i.e., they
assume that any language which they encounter is of a certain
restricted kind). This innate knowledge is often referred to as
universal grammar. It is argued
that modeling knowledge of language using a formal grammar accounts
for the "productivity" of language: with a limited set of grammar
rules and a finite set of terms, humans are able to produce an
infinite number of sentences, including sentences no one has
previously said. He has always acknowledged his debt to
Pāṇini for his modern notion of an
explicit generative grammar. This is related to
Rationalist ideas of
a
priori knowledge, in that it is not due to experience.
The Principles and Parameters approach (P&P)—developed in his
Pisa 1979 Lectures, later published as
Lectures on Government
and Binding (LGB)—make strong claims regarding universal
grammar: that the grammatical principles underlying languages are
innate and fixed, and the differences among the world's languages
can be characterized in terms of parameter settings in the brain
(such as the pro-drop parameter, which indicates whether an
explicit subject is always required, as in English, or can be
optionally dropped, as in Spanish), which are often likened to
switches. (Hence the term principles and parameters, often given to
this approach.) In this view, a child learning a language need only
acquire the necessary
lexical items (words,
grammatical
morphemes, and idioms), and
determine the appropriate parameter settings, which can be done
based on a few key examples.
Proponents of this view argue that the pace at which children learn
languages is inexplicably rapid, unless children have an innate
ability to learn languages. The similar steps followed by children
all across the world when learning languages, and the fact that
children make certain characteristic errors as they learn their
first language, whereas other seemingly logical kinds of errors
never occur (and, according to Chomsky, should be attested if a
purely general, rather than language-specific, learning mechanism
were being employed), are also pointed to as motivation for
innateness.
More recently, in his
Minimalist
Program (1995), while retaining the core concept of "principles
and parameters," Chomsky attempts a major overhaul of the
linguistic machinery involved in the LGB model, stripping from it
all but the barest necessary elements, while advocating a general
approach to the architecture of the human language faculty that
emphasizes principles of economy and optimal design, reverting to a
derivational approach to generation, in contrast with the largely
representational approach of classic P&P.
Chomsky's ideas have had a strong influence on researchers
investigating the
acquisition of
language in children, though some researchers who work in this
area today do not support Chomsky's theories, instead advocating
emergentist or
connectionist theories reducing language to an
instance of general processing mechanisms in the brain.
He also theorizes that unlimited extension of a language such as
English is possible only by the
recursive
device of embedding sentences in sentences.
His best-known work in
phonology is
The Sound Pattern of
English (1968), written with
Morris Halle (and often known as simply
SPE). This work has had a great significance for the
development in the field. While phonological theory has since moved
beyond "SPE phonology" in many important respects, the SPE system
is considered the precursor of some of the most influential
phonological theories today, including
autosegmental phonology,
lexical phonology and
optimality theory. Chomsky no longer
publishes on phonology.
Generative grammar
The Chomskyan approach towards
syntax, often
termed
generative grammar,
studies grammar as a body of knowledge possessed by language users.
Since the 1960s, Chomsky has maintained that much of this knowledge
is innate, implying that children need only learn certain parochial
features of their native languages. The innate body of linguistic
knowledge is often termed
Universal
Grammar. From Chomsky's perspective, the strongest evidence for
the existence of Universal Grammar is simply the fact that children
successfully acquire their native languages in so little time.
Furthermore, he argues that there is an enormous gap between the
linguistic stimuli to which children are exposed and the rich
linguistic knowledge which they attain (the "
poverty of the stimulus" argument).
The knowledge of Universal Grammar would serve to bridge that
gap.
Chomsky's
theories are popular, particularly in the United States
, but they have never been free from
controversy. Criticism has come from a number of different
directions. Chomskyan linguists rely heavily on the intuitions of
native speakers regarding which sentences of their languages are
well-formed. This practice has been criticized both on general
methodological grounds, and because it has (some argue) led to an
overemphasis on the study of English. As of now, hundreds of
different languages have received at least some attention in the
generative grammar literature,but some critics nonetheless perceive
this overemphasis, and a tendency to base claims about Universal
Grammar on an overly small sample of languages. Some
psychologists and
psycholinguists, though sympathetic to
Chomsky's overall program, have argued that Chomskyan linguists pay
insufficient attention to experimental data from language
processing, with the consequence that their theories are not
psychologically plausible. Other critics (see
language learning) have questioned whether
it is necessary to posit Universal Grammar in order to explain
child language acquisition, arguing that domain-general learning
mechanisms are sufficient.
Today there are many different branches of generative grammar; one
can view grammatical frameworks such as
head-driven phrase
structure grammar,
lexical functional grammar and
combinatory categorial
grammar as broadly Chomskyan and generative in orientation, but
with significant differences in execution.
Cultural anthropologist and linguist
Daniel Everett of Illinois
State University
has proposed that the language of the Pirahã people of the northwestern
rainforest of Brazil
resists
Chomsky's theories of generative grammar. Everett asserts
that the
Pirahã language does
not have any evidence of
recursion, one of
the key properties of generative grammar. Additionally, it is
claimed that the Pirahan have no fixed words for colors or numbers,
speak in single
phonemes, and often speak in
prosody. However, Everett's
claims have themselves been criticized. David Pesetsky of MIT,
Andrew Nevins of Harvard, and Cilene Rodrigues of the Universidade
Estadual de Campinas in Brazil have argued in a joint paper that
all of Everett's major claims contain serious deficiencies. Chomsky
himself has commented that "The reports are interesting, but do not
bear on the work of mine (along with many others). No one has
proposed that languages must have subordinate clauses, number
words, etc. Many structures of our language (and presumably that of
the Piraha) are rarely if ever used in ordinary speech because of
extrinsic constraints." The dispute continues.
Chomsky hierarchy
Chomsky is famous for investigating various kinds of
formal languages and whether or not they
might be capable of capturing key properties of human language. His
Chomsky hierarchy partitions
formal grammars into classes, or
groups, with increasing expressive power, i.e., each successive
class can generate a broader set of formal languages than the one
before. Interestingly, Chomsky argues that modeling some aspects of
human language requires a more complex formal grammar (as measured
by the Chomsky hierarchy) than modeling others. For example, while
a
regular language is powerful
enough to model English
morphology, it is not powerful
enough to model English
syntax. In addition
to being relevant in linguistics, the Chomsky hierarchy has also
become important in
computer
science (especially in
compiler
construction and
automata
theory).
Contributions to psychology
Chomsky's work in linguistics has had profound implications for
modern
psychology. For Chomsky,
linguistics is a branch of
cognitive psychology; genuine insights
in linguistics imply concomitant understandings of aspects of
mental processing and human nature. His theory of a
universal grammar was seen by many as a
direct challenge to the established
behaviorist theories of the time and had major
consequences for understanding how children learn
language and what, exactly, the ability to use
language is. Many of the more basic principles of this theory
(though not necessarily the stronger claims made by the
principles and parameters approach
described above) are now generally accepted in some circles.
In 1959, Chomsky published an influential critique of
B.F. Skinner's
Verbal Behavior, a book in
which Skinner offered a theoretical account of language in
functional, behavioral terms. "Verbal behavior" he defined as
learned behavior which has its characteristic consequences being
delivered through the learned behavior of others; this makes for a
view of communicative behaviors much larger than that usually
addressed by linguists. Skinner's approach focused on the
circumstances in which language was used; for example, asking for
water was functionally a different response than labeling something
as water, responding to someone asking for water, etc. These
functionally different kinds of responses, which required in turn
separate explanations, sharply contrasted both with traditional
notions of language and Chomsky's psycholinguistic approach.
Chomsky thought that a functionalist explanation restricting itself
to questions of communicative performance ignored important
questions. (Chomsky-Language and Mind, 1968). He focused on
questions concerning the operation and development of innate
structures for syntax capable of creatively organizing, cohering,
adapting and combining words and phrases into intelligible
utterances.
In the review Chomsky emphasized that the scientific application of
behavioral principles from animal research is severely lacking in
explanatory adequacy and is furthermore particularly superficial as
an account of human verbal behavior because a theory restricting
itself to external conditions, to "what is learned", cannot
adequately account for generative grammar. Chomsky raised the
examples of rapid language acquisition of children, including their
quickly developing ability to form grammatical sentences, and the
universally creative language use of competent native speakers to
highlight the ways in which Skinner's view exemplified
under-determination of theory by evidence. He argued that to
understand human verbal behavior such as the creative aspects of
language use and language development, one must first postulate a
genetic linguistic endowment. The assumption that important aspects
of language are the product of universal innate ability runs
counter to Skinner's radical behaviorism.
Chomsky's 1959 review has drawn fire from a number of critics, the
most famous criticism being that of Kenneth MacCorquodale's 1970
paper
On Chomsky’s Review of Skinner’s Verbal Behavior
(
Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, volume
13, pages 83–99). This and similar critiques have raised certain
points not generally acknowledged outside of behavioral psychology,
such as the claim that Chomsky did not possess an adequate
understanding of either behavioral psychology in general, or the
differences between Skinner's behaviorism and other varieties;
consequently, it is argued that he made several serious errors. On
account of these perceived problems, the critics maintain that the
review failed to demonstrate what it has often been cited as doing.
As such, it is averred that those most influenced by Chomsky's
paper probably either already substantially agreed with Chomsky or
never actually read it. Chomsky has maintained that the review was
directed at the way Skinner's variant of behavioral psychology "was
being used in Quinean empiricism and naturalization of
philosophy".
It has been claimed that Chomsky's critique of Skinner's
methodology and basic assumptions paved the way for the "
cognitive revolution", the shift in
American psychology between the 1950s through the 1970s from being
primarily behavioral to being primarily cognitive. In his 1966
Cartesian Linguistics and subsequent works, Chomsky laid
out an explanation of human language faculties that has become the
model for investigation in some areas of psychology. Much of the
present conception of how the mind works draws directly from ideas
that found their first persuasive author of modern times in
Chomsky.
There are three key ideas. First is that the mind is "cognitive",
or that the mind actually contains mental states, beliefs, doubts,
and so on. Second, he argued that most of the important properties
of language and mind are innate. The acquisition and development of
a language is a result of the unfolding of innate propensities
triggered by the experiential input of the external environment.
The link between human innate aptitude to language and heredity has
been at the core of the debate opposing Noam Chomsky to
Jean Piaget at the Abbaye de Royaumont in 1975
(
Language and Learning. The Debate between Jean Piaget
and Noam Chomsky, Harvard University Press, 1980). Although
links between the genetic setup of humans and aptitude to language
have been suggested at that time and in later discussions, we are
still far from understanding the genetic bases of human language.
Work derived from the model of selective stabilization of
synapses set up by
Jean-Pierre Changeux,
Philippe Courrège and
Antoine Danchin, and more recently developed
experimentally and theoretically by
Jacques Mehler and
Stanislas Dehaene in particular in the
domain of
numerical cognition
lend support to the Chomskyan "nativism". It does not, however,
provide clues about the type of rules that would organize neuronal
connections to permit language competence. Subsequent psychologists
have extended this general "nativist" thesis beyond language.
Lastly, Chomsky made the concept of "
modularity" a critical feature of the
mind's cognitive architecture. The mind is composed of an array of
interacting, specialized subsystems with limited flows of
inter-communication. This model contrasts sharply with the old idea
that any piece of information in the mind could be accessed by any
other cognitive process (optical illusions, for example, cannot be
"turned off" even when they are known to be illusions).
Opinion on cultural criticism of science
Chomsky strongly disagrees with
post-structuralist and
postmodern criticisms of science:
I have spent a lot of my life working on questions such
as these, using the only methods I know of; those condemned here as
"science", "rationality," "logic," and so on. I therefore read the
papers with some hope that they would help me "transcend" these
limitations, or perhaps suggest an entirely different course. I'm
afraid I was disappointed. Admittedly, that may be my own
limitation. Quite regularly, "my eyes glaze over" when I read
polysyllabic discourse on the themes of poststructuralism and postmodernism; what I understand is largely
truism or error, but that is only a fraction
of the total word count. True, there are lots of other things I
don't understand: the articles in the current issues of math and
physics journals, for example. But there is a difference. In the
latter case, I know how to get to understand them, and have done
so, in cases of particular interest to me; and I also know that
people in these fields can explain the contents to me at my level,
so that I can gain what (partial) understanding I may want. In
contrast, no one seems to be able to explain to me why the latest
post-this-and-that is (for the most part) other than truism, error,
or gibberish, and I do not know how to proceed.
Chomsky believes that science is a good way to start understanding
history and human affairs:
I think studying science is a good way to get into
fields like history. The reason is, you learn what an argument
means, you learn what evidence is, you learn what makes sense to
postulate and when, what's going to be convincing. You internalize
the modes of rational inquiry, which happen to be much more
advanced in the sciences than anywhere else. On the other hand,
applying relativity theory to history isn't going to get you
anywhere. So it's a mode of thinking.
Chomsky has also commented on critiques of "white male science,"
stating that they are much like the
antisemitic and politically motivated attacks
against "Jewish physics" used by the
Nazis to
denigrate research done by Jewish scientists during the
Deutsche Physik
movement:
In fact, the entire idea of "white male science" reminds me, I'm
afraid, of "Jewish physics." Perhaps it is another inadequacy of
mine, but when I read a scientific paper, I can't tell whether the
author is white or is male. The same is true of discussion of work
in class, the office, or somewhere else. I rather doubt that the
non-white, non-male students, friends, and colleagues with whom I
work would be much impressed with the doctrine that their thinking
and understanding differ from "white male science" because of their
"culture or gender and race." I suspect that "surprise" would not
be quite the proper word for their reaction.
Debates
Chomsky has been known to vigorously defend and debate his views
and opinions, in philosophy, linguistics, and politics. He has had
notable debates with such varied intellectuals as
Jean Piaget,
Michel
Foucault,
William F.
Buckley, Jr.,
Christopher Hitchens,
Richard Perle,
Hilary
Putnam,
WVO Quine, and
Alan Dershowitz, to name a very few.
Political views
Chomsky has stated that his "personal visions are fairly
traditional anarchist ones, with origins in The Enlightenment and
classical liberalism" and he has praised
libertarian socialism. He is a
sympathizer of
anarcho-syndicalism and a member of the
IWW union. He has
published a book on anarchism titled, "Chomsky on Anarchism", which
was published by the anarchist book collective,
AK Press, in 2006.Noam Chomsky has been engaged in
political activism all of his adult life and expressed opinions on
politics and world events which are widely cited, publicized and
discussed. Chomsky has in turn argued that his views are those
which the powerful do not want to hear, and for this reason he is
considered an American political
dissident. Some highlights of his political
views:
- Power, unless justified, is
inherently illegitimate. The burden of proof is on those in
authority to demonstrate why their elevated position is justified.
If this burden can't be met, the authority in question should be
dismantled. Authority for its own sake is inherently unjustified.
An example of a legitimate authority is that exerted by an adult to
prevent a young child from wandering into traffic.
- That there isn't much difference between slavery, and renting
one's self to an owner, or "wage
slavery." He feels that it is an attack on personal integrity
that destroys and undermines our freedoms. He holds workers should
own and control their own workplace, a view held (as he notes) by
the Lowell Mill Girls.
- Very strong criticisms of the foreign policy of the United
States. Specifically, he claims double standards in
a foreign policy preaching democracy and freedom for all, while
promoting, supporting and allying itself with non-democratic and
repressive organizations and states such as Chile
under
Augusto Pinochet, and argues that
this results in massive human rights
violations. He often argues that America's intervention in
foreign nations, including the secret aid given to the Contras in Nicaragua, an event of which he has been
very critical, fits any standard description of terrorism.
- He has opposed the U.S. global "war on
drugs", claiming its language to be misleading, and referring
to it as "the war on certain drugs." He favors education and
prevention rather than military or police action as a means of
reducing drug use. In an interview in 1999, Chomsky argued that,
whereas crops such as tobacco receive no mention in governmental
exposition, other non-profitable crops, such as marijuana, are
specifically targeted because of the effect achieved by persecuting
the poor: He has stated:
US domestic drug policy does not carry out its stated
goals, and policymakers are well aware of that. If it isn't about
reducing substance abuse, what is it about? It is reasonably clear,
both from current actions and the historical record, that
substances tend to be criminalized when they are associated with
the so-called dangerous classes, that the criminalization of
certain substances is a technique of social control.
- Critical of the American capitalist
system and big business, he describes himself as a libertarian socialist who sympathizes
with anarcho-syndicalism and is
also critical of Leninist branches of
socialism. He also believes that
libertarian socialist values exemplify the rational and morally
consistent extension of original unreconstructed classical liberal
and radical humanist ideas to an industrial context. Specifically
he believes that society should be highly organized and based on
democratic control of communities and work places. He believes that
the radical humanist ideas of his two major influences, Bertrand Russell and John Dewey, were "rooted in the Enlightenment and
classical liberalism, and retain their revolutionary
character."
- Chomsky has stated that he believes the United States remains
the "greatest country in the world", a comment that he later
clarified by saying, "Evaluating countries is senseless and I would
never put things in those terms, but that some of America's
advances, particularly in the area of free speech, that have been achieved by
centuries of popular struggle, are to be admired." He has also said
"In many respects, the United States is the freest country in the
world. I don't just mean in terms of limits on state coercion,
though that's true too, but also in terms of individual relations.
The United States comes closer to classlessness in terms of
interpersonal relations than virtually any society."
- Chomsky objects to the criticism that anarchism is inconsistent with support for
government welfare, stating in part:
One can, of course, take the position that we don't
care about the problems people face today, and want to think about
a possible tomorrow. OK, but then don't pretend to have any
interest in human beings and their fate, and stay in the seminar
room and intellectual coffee house with other privileged people. Or
one can take a much more humane position: I want to work, today, to
build a better society for tomorrow -- the classical anarchist
position, quite different from the slogans in the question. That's
exactly right, and it leads directly to support for the people
facing problems today: for enforcement of health and safety
regulation, provision of national health insurance, support systems
for people who need them, etc. That is not a sufficient condition
for organizing for a different and better future, but it is a
necessary condition. Anything else will receive the well-merited
contempt of people who do not have the luxury to disregard the
circumstances in which they live, and try to survive.
- According to Chomsky: "I'm a boring speaker and I like it that
way…. I doubt that people are attracted to whatever the persona
is…. People are interested in the issues, and they're interested in
the issues because they are important." "We don't want to be swayed
by superficial eloquence, by emotion and so on."
- He holds views that can be summarized as anti-war but not strictly pacifist. He prominently
opposed the Vietnam War and most other
wars in his lifetime. He expressed these views through a variety of
protest methods, such as withholding taxes and peace walks. He
published a number of articles about the war in Vietnam, including
"The Responsibility of Intellectuals". However, he maintains that
U.S. involvement in World War II was probably justified, with the
caveat that a preferable outcome would have been to end or prevent
the war through earlier diplomacy. In particular, he believes that
the dropping
of nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were "among the most
unspeakable crimes in history".
- He has a broad view of free-speech rights, especially in the
mass media; he opposes censorship and refuses to take legal action
against those who may have libeled
him.
- He
has made major criticisms of Israel
and
supporters of Israel, arguing that "supporters of Israel are in
reality supporters of its moral degeneration and probable ultimate
destruction", and that "Israel's very clear choice of expansion
over security may well lead to that consequence"
Chomsky has frequently stated that there is no connection between
his work in linguistics and his political views, and is generally
critical of the idea that competent discussion of political topics
requires expert knowledge in academic fields. In a 1969 interview,
he said regarding the connection between his politics and his work
in linguistics:
I still feel myself that there is a kind of tenuous
connection. I would not want to overstate it but I think it means
something to me at least. I think that anyone's political ideas or
their ideas of social organization must be rooted ultimately in
some concept of human nature and human needs. (New Left
Review, 57, Sept. – Oct. 1969, p. 21)
Influence in other fields
Chomskyan models have been used as a theoretical
basis in several other fields. The
Chomsky hierarchy is often taught in
fundamental
computer science
courses as it confers insight into the various types of
formal languages. This hierarchy can also be
discussed in mathematical terms and has generated interest among
mathematicians, particularly
combinatorialists. Some arguments in
evolutionary psychology are derived
from his research results.
The 1984 Nobel Prize laureate in Medicine and Physiology,
Niels K. Jerne, used Chomsky's generative model to
explain the human immune system, equating "components of a
generative grammar … with various features ofprotein structures".
The title of Jerne's Stockholm Nobel lecture was "The Generative
Grammar of the Immune System".
Nim Chimpsky, a chimpanzee who was the
subject of a study in
animal
language acquisition at
Columbia
University, was named after Chomsky in reference to his view of
language acquisition as a
uniquely human ability.
Famous computer scientist
Donald Knuth
admits to reading Syntactic Structures during his honeymoon and
being greatly influenced by it. "…I must admit to taking a copy of
Noam Chomsky's Syntactic Structures along with me on my honeymoon
in 1961 … Here was a marvelous thing: a mathematical theory of
language in which I could use a computer programmer's
intuition!".
Another focus of Chomsky's political work has been an analysis of
mainstream mass media (especially in the United States), its
structures and constraints, and its perceived role in supporting
big business and government interests.
Edward S. Herman and Chomsky's book
Manufacturing
Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988)
explores this topic in depth, presenting their "propaganda model"
of the news media with numerous detailed case studies demonstrating
it. According to this propaganda model, more democratic societies
like the U.S. use subtle, non-violent means of control, unlike
totalitarian systems, where physical force can readily be used to
coerce the general population. In an often-quoted remark, Chomsky
states that "propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a
totalitarian state." (Media Control)
The model attempts to explain this perceived
systemic bias of the mass media in terms of
structural economic causes rather than a conspiracy of people. It
argues the bias derives from five "filters" that all published news
must "pass through" which combine to systematically distort news
coverage.
The first filter, ownership, notes that most major media outlets
are owned by large corporations. The second, funding, notes that
the outlets derive the majority of their funding from advertising,
not readers. Thus, since they are profit-oriented businesses
selling a product—readers and audiences—to other businesses
(advertisers), the model would expect them to publish news which
would reflect the desires and values of those businesses. In
addition, the news media are dependent on government institutions
and major businesses with strong biases as sources (the third
filter) for much of their information. Flak, the fourth filter,
refers to the various pressure groups which attack the media for
supposed bias. Norms, the fifth filter, refer to the common
conceptions shared by those in the profession of journalism. (Note:
in the original text, published in 1988, the fifth filter was
"anticommunism". However, with the fall of the Soviet Union, it has
been broadened to allow for shifts in public opinion.) The model
describes how the media form a decentralized and non-conspiratorial
but nonetheless very powerful propaganda system, that is able to
mobilize an élite consensus, frame public debate within élite
perspectives and at the same time give the appearance of democratic
consent.
Chomsky and Herman test their model empirically by picking "paired
examples"—pairs of events that were objectively similar except for
the alignment of domestic élite interests. They use a number of
such examples to attempt to show that in cases where an "official
enemy" does something (like murder of a religious official), the
press investigates thoroughly and devotes a great amount of
coverage to the matter, thus victims of "enemy" states are
considered "worthy". But when the domestic government or an ally
does the same thing (or worse), the press downplays the story, thus
victims of US or US client states are considered "unworthy."
They also test their model against the case that is often held up
as the best example of a free and aggressively independent press,
the media coverage of the
Tet
Offensive during the
Vietnam War.
Even in this case, they argue that the press was behaving
subserviently to élite interests.
Academic achievements, awards and honors
In the
spring of 1969, he delivered the John Locke Lectures at Oxford
University
; in January 1970, the Bertrand Russell Memorial Lecture at
University
of Cambridge
; in 1972, the Nehru Memorial
Lecture in New
Delhi
; in 1977, the Huizinga Lecture in Leiden
; in 1988 the
Massey Lectures at the University
of Toronto
, titled "Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in
Democratic Societies"; in 1997, The Davie Memorial Lecture on
Academic Freedom in Cape
Town
, and many others.
Chomsky has received many honorary degrees from universities around
the world, including from the following:
He is a
member of the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences
, the National Academy of Sciences
, and the American Philosophical
Society
. In addition, he is a member of other
professional and learned societies in the United States and abroad,
and is a recipient of the Distinguished Scientific Contribution
Award of the
American
Psychological Association, the
Kyoto
Prize in Basic Sciences, the
Helmholtz Medal, the
Dorothy Eldridge Peacemaker
Award, the
Ben Franklin Medal
in Computer and Cognitive Science, and others. He is twice winner
of The
Orwell Award, granted by The
National Council of Teachers of English for "Distinguished
Contributions to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language" (in 1987
and 1989).
He is a member of the
Serbian Academy of Sciences
and Arts in Department of Social Sciences.
Chomsky is a member of the Faculty Advisory Board of
MIT Harvard Research
Journal.
In 2005, Chomsky received an honorary fellowship from the
Literary and Historical
Society.
In 2007,
Chomsky received The Uppsala University
(Sweden
) Honorary
Doctor's degree in commemoration of Carolus Linnaeus.
In
February 2008, he received the President's Medal from the Literary and
Debating Society of the National
University of Ireland, Galway
.
Chomsky has an
Erdős number of
four.
Chomsky was voted the leading living
public intellectual in
The 2005 Global Intellectuals
Poll conducted by the British magazine
Prospect. He reacted, saying "I
don't pay a lot of attention to polls". In a list compiled by the
magazine
New Statesman in
2006, he was voted seventh in the list of "Heroes of our
time".
Actor
Viggo Mortensen with
avant-garde guitarist
Buckethead
dedicated their 2006 album, called
Pandemoniumfromamerica to
Chomsky.
Criticism
Much Chomsky criticism revolves around his
political views. His status as an
intellectual figure within the
left
wing of
American politics has
resulted in much criticism from the left and the right.
Bibliography
Filmography
- Manufacturing
Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, Director: Mark Achbar
and Peter Wintonick (1992)
- Last Party 2000, Director: Rebecca Chaiklin and
Donovan Leitch (2001)
- Power and Terror: Noam Chomsky in Our Times, Director:
John Junkerman (2002)
- Distorted Morality—America's War On Terror?, Director:
John Junkerman (2003)
- Noam Chomsky: Rebel Without a Pause (TV), Director:
Will Pascoe (2003)
- The Corporation,
Directors: Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott; Writer: Joel Bakan
(2003)
- Peace,
Propaganda & the Promised Land, Directors: Sut Jhally
and Bathsheba Ratzkoff (2004)
- On Power, Dissent and Racism: A discussion with
Noam Chomsky, Journalist: Nicolas Rossier; Producers: Eli
Choukri, Baraka Productions (2004)
- Lake of Fire, Director: Tony Kaye (2006)
- American Feud: A History of Conservatives and
Liberals, Director: Richard Hall (2007)
- Chomsky & Cie Director: Olivier Azam (out in
2008)
- An Inconvenient
Tax, Director: Christopher P. Marshall (out in 2009)
- The Money Fix, Director: Alan Rosenblith (2009)
See also
References
External links
Top topics
Wikis
Quiz
Map
Search
