Chomsky, Noam (1928—)
American linguist, cognitive psychologist, philosopher and political activist. It’s almost as if Chomsky has had two separate careers (both of them luminous) because his linguistics work is so complex it is difficult to imagine him being able to write for a popular audience and yet from the time of the Vietnam War, which he vehemently opposed, that is precisely what he has managed to do. Consequently he is one of the most widely cited and widely known scholars alive today. That said, in the academic world his name remains very closely associated with generative grammar, which was his invention. Born in Philadelphia in the US to immigrant parents---his father was from the Ukraine and his mother from Belarus---he was raised in a family that consciously immersed itself in Hebrew culture and literature, in spite of the blatant anti-Semitism they encountered in their largely Catholic neighbourhood. His father was a renowned Hebrew scholar with a strong interest in politics---he was a member of the Industrial Workers of the World (or ‘Wobblies’ as they were affectionately known)---and an obvious influence. Chomsky went to high school in Philadelphia and completed his BA and PhD at the University of Pennsylvania. While writing his PhD he was supported by a fellowship at Harvard. On graduation in 1955 he took a job with MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and has worked there ever since. His first book, a reworked version of his dissertation, Syntactic Structures (1957), was a watershed in linguistics. Chomsky sought to shift the emphasis in linguistics from the study of existing examples of language use with a view to describing the regular patterns contained therein to the more speculative matter of how language users know how to use language in the first place. This ability to use languages, which he labels competence in contrast to performance which refers to the actual use of language, is, he claims, innate, meaning all humans have it even if they don’t know it. Otherwise, he argues, we could not explain how it is possible for children to learn language so quickly. Thus, in a famous review of behaviourism psychologist B. F. Skinner’s Verbal Behaviour (1957) published in 1959, Chomsky rejected the stimuli-response model of language acquisition and use. Human language, in contrast to the language of animals (e.g. the dance bees perform to inform the rest of the hive where the honey is), is ‘open’, and characterized by creativity and transformation (hence Chomsky’s theory is sometimes referred to as ‘transformational grammar’). In 1967, Chomsky contributed an essay to the New York Review of Books entitled ‘The Responsibility of Intellectuals’ which attracted international attention. Inspired by Dwight MacDonald’s essays about World War II which asked whether and to what extent the people of the belligerent countries are responsible for the actions their governments take, Chomsky argues that it is only those people who actively resist allowing their government to act in a way they find morally reprehensible who can say they are without responsibility for what is committed in their name. It is a standard that Chomsky holds himself to: his means of taking action has been to work tirelessly to expose government (particularly, but not limited to, the US government) cover-ups, deceptions, and falsehoods in both domestic and foreign policy. Apparently blessed with an indefatigable capacity for work, Chomsky has written an average of one book a year for the past 30 years dealing with this subject. The best known of these are: American Power and the New Mandarins (1969), Year 501: The Conquest Continues (1993), Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance (2003), and Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy (2006). A controversial figure, Chomsky’s views are not universally shared, or without their particular problems, but by his persistence in exposing political malfeasance he has surely helped in some measure to make the world a better place. Further Reading: R. Barsky Noam Chomsky: A Life of Dissent (1997). A. Edgley The Social and Political Thought of Noam Chomsky (2002). N. Smith Chomsky: Ideas and Ideals (1999). W. Sperlich Noam Chomsky (2006). chora See khōra.