Noam+Chomsky


 * Chomsky, Noam** **(1928–)**The most important linguist of the late twentieth century, Chomsky is also one of the foremost leftist critics of American foreign policy and the news media. His main contribution to linguistics is the influential “transformative–generative grammar”—an attempt to describe mathematically the syntactical processes common to all human language. Chomsky draws a key distinction between the //deep structure// and //surface structure// of languages. The deep structure, he argues, is not culturally determined (and therefore ultimately arbitrary) but rather “hardwired” in the human brain. It constitutes what he terms a //competence//, a set of dispositions to grammatical formation that underlie the surface diversity of human languages. Some of Chomsky's most interesting examples draw on the relatively uniform process of language acquisition among children and their capacity to extrapolate rules (if often incorrectly) from limited linguistic experience.

Transformative–generative grammar thus seeks to move beyond the strongly culturalist position of structural linguistics (as developed by Ferdinand de Saussure, C. S. Peirce, Roman Jakobson, and others), which had demonstrated that language was a free-floating structure of signifiers that bore no intrinsic relation to the mental concepts signified. If the major thrust of this work was to reveal language as a relatively arbitrary structure of differentiated signs, Chomsky set out to scientifically describe the ground rules of that structure. Although many of his specific claims and mathematical abstractions have been challenged by subsequent work, some version of transformative–generative grammar underlies virtually all of modern linguistics.

Chomsky's prolific criticism of politics and the mass media bears little relationship to his work in linguistics. In this area, he has repeatedly sought to demonstrate the alignment of media coverage with government and corporate interests (which, Chomsky is quick to point out, include the media companies), especially in the area of foreign policy. His major works in linguistics include //Syntactic Structures// (1957) and //Cartesian Linguistics// (1966). In media and political criticism, his writing includes //Manufacturing Consent// (1968, with Edward Herman) and //Necessary Illusions// (1989).

"Chomsky, Noam" //Dictionary of the Social Sciences//. Craig Calhoun, ed. Oxford University Press 2002. //Oxford Reference Online//. Oxford University Press. 21 September 2007 