First off, what does it mean that “syntax is not important”?
His work more or less says not that language is innate, but that there is a period of opportunity in childhood which is more conducive to acquiring languages. In a use it or lose it of all existing language parameters; the feral children losing all since they are never confronted with working out the one needed. I’m pretty sure Pinker believes the same and has addressed this in the Language Instinct. Chomsky’s more recent work deals with splitting language into i and e languages. I-language being the inner knowledge and the E-language which is the written and external language that people can see. I-language, he posits, is biological. While e-language is learned or acquired. 2nd language acquisition researchers often times even differentiate these two (learned and acquired), since learning Spanish much later can be a different process than “acquiring” it as a kid through being raised in that environment.
George Lakoff is not to my knowledge very popular here, true. But I don’t see his ideas as being more correct; and the two had a good feud for awhile. He seems to be wanting to say that rationalism is less important and categories drive us. Which is of course where he gets his obnoxious political opinions. He thinks that all people are irrational and so irrational politicians must read his books in order to capture the audience through an understanding of categories and metaphors which people have formed. Which becomes a battle of emotionalisms.
Right now in the press people are taking to Daniel Everett who also, like Lakoff, thinks he is taking Chomsky down one a notch. Through his work on the Piraha indians. It’s been discussed for a long time in various journals, though no one seems to be budging an inch.
(It should be noted that cognitive linguistics is a somewhat new “school” rather than area of linguistics. And people who have degrees in this, of course, will have biases towards Lakoff. Since that is his thing. People who have degrees in syntax will probably be geared toward other people. People who have degrees in teahing language will have biases towards so and so. Same for phonetics and phonology. And so on. It all depends on what you’ve devoted research towards; but cognitive linguistics, in my opinion, may be more of a fad moreso than the study of Syntax, phonology, applied linguistics, biolinguistics, pragmatics, etc. It’s more like having a degree in Keynesianism.)
Chomsky is a confused marxist who is just smart enough to know it cannot work but so stupid that he believes he can create a better system than capitalism. Pseudo-intellectuals believe him to be some genius, as pointed out already - impressionable college kids. After I’ve completely destroyed many a naive socialists ideals with basic logic, the pseudo-intellectuals will retreat to a Chomsky like fantasy of creating some “idealist” (but absolutely useless) economic system in their mind. It usually revolves around their inability to cope with the real world.
I’m not quite so reactionary as PopTech (I do think he is a legitimate intellectual and has even challenged a lot of pseudo-intellectualism in academia like postmodernism and the irrationalism of Lakoff… and even challenges liberal academic complicity in military and other state power), though I understand he makes glaring, glaring errors. Such as position where he says government is not inherently evil, his backing the military draft, and even his backing government-run health care (how any anarchist could not see how this will be a hoisting on one’s own anti-corporatist petard, I do not know). And of course many, many other things. Infoshop had an article about a month ago criticizing Chomsky’s face-palming bad decision to back Hugo Chavez. It’s worth checking out.
Chomsky is attention whore with his over the top anti-americanism. He always come up with ridiculous excuses to justify slaughter and supression of freedom when done by some 3rd world dictator.
Well 1) Mises never claimed to be an anarchist before saying such a thing. 2) I don’t agree (nor expect others to to agree) with something simply because Mises said it. (My point is not that aught to agree with my position about anarchism or Chomsky’s, but that he completely misrepresents himself as an anarchist). Still, like Mises, I can overlook many of the mistakes in Chomsky’s conclusions – and even some in his methodology – to enjoy some of his findings. I find him clear to read and less with the jargon and concepts that muddy up other critical writing on foreign policy and other issues.
If you read the piece I linked above, his economy theory is not anarcho-capitalism but anarcho-syndicalism, which is an absurd marxist based anarchy. So he is not remotely supporting your position except for the fact that his economic system includes the word “anarcho”. Like I said before he is a confused marxist.
That’s true, but anarcho-syndicalists at the very least hate the state and politicians. They find the state inherently evil and oppressive as we here do. They refuse to take part in politics. They are for voluntarism and non-violence. They believe in decentralization to a direct means of decision making, rather than vulgar delegated elections. They generally don’t have that much to do with Marxism, either, other than being about workers (completely different goal and completely different means).
This doesn’t jibe well with what Chomsky seems to say again and again. Though, the above is largely true for virtually all anarchists (of that type) that I’ve met. If you asked them to vote on health reform or military draft or something so stupid as that, they’d look at you like were an idiot.
No. He was calling Milošević a thug but he was critical of the bombing.
I think of Noam Chomsky as a sort of John C. Calhoun. (Funny I know.) Because Chomsky does have a problem where he becomes an apologist of national governments around the world, the same as Calhoun had a problem that he was pro-slavery. I think Chomsky’s initial enthusiasm over the Khmer Rouge is well known. But he does favour national sovereignty over imperial hegemony, the same way Calhoun favoured states rights over the federal government.
Chomsky’s useful, in regards to exposing many of the biggest threats to liberty steming from a fusion of media, government, and corporate stuctures. His distrust of authority certianly makes him appeal to liberty-minded people, and can make him some good reading, but his fatal flaw is his distrust of the induvidual, which poisons his economics, and ultimately his worldview.
A quick look over the internet and I could not find this open letter, but I recall he was all for war for the Muslims in the former Yugoslavia. And need I mention his support, and subsequent denial, of the terror of Pol Pot’s Year Zero regime in Cambodia?
I`d have to look into what was he talking around the time of Bosnia. But he came out against the 1999 bombing. I didn’t know he was for the Gulf War?? This alone puts him in a new light for me.
How do you know that they have all killed people? Whether they wanted to in the past or not, is highly subjective and backed with little evidence. However, I have better to claim that they have a reason NOW to kill the American Government after the psychological damage done to them at the ages of 14-15.
Basically it was this: Chomsky opposed Obama and realized he was just another imperialist toadie of the establishment, but encouraged people to “vote Obama without illusions” in swing states because he viewed McCain as an even graver threat. In other words he’s a gradualist, which pretty much means he’s not a true anarchist.