Noam Chomsky: Biography Of An Anti-establishment Linguist
Today there are few thinkers and researchers with the renown of Noam Chomsky His interventions in the media constantly circulate on the Internet, the interviews she offers have massive audience levels and she has even sneaked into the occasional song, like this one by Espaldamaceta.
It’s not strange. Chomsky is a controversial person, and curiously, he is not controversial because he sells his life in pieces of exclusives or because he has a groundbreaking aesthetic, as is common in celebrity nowadays. Noam Chomsky He is known for his ideas in two seemingly disconnected fields: politics and linguistics (wave psycholinguistics).
Below we will briefly review the details of his life path to date.
Noam Chomsky was born in 1928 in the American city of Philadelphia, into the family formed by the marriage of William Chomsky and Elsie Simonofsky, both scholars of the Hebrew language and originally from Eastern Europe (present-day Ukraine and Belarus, respectively). . Both Noam Chomsky and his younger brother, David Eli Chomsky, They were educated in an environment of respect for the Jewish roots of their lineage and they were also imbued with the activist spirit of their parents, greatly influenced by the left-wing Zionism that was taking shape in Israel in the appearance of the kibbutz communes.
During his childhood and entry into adolescence, Noam Chomsky developed a vocational habit based on reading essays on politics. This, together with the fact that from a very young age he frequented environments related to the anti-system left, led him to situate himself ideologically in anarchism Like researchers like Viktor Frankl, he began writing his reflections at a very young age, before the age of 13.
In 1945, Chomsky began a university career in the world of the humanities and, specifically, philosophy and Semitic languages, all from the classrooms of the University of Philadelphia. Coming into contact with the linguist Zellig Harris during his university years made him decide to focus his studies on linguistics. In 1949, he would also marry Carol Doris Schatz (later known as Carol Chomsky), who would also become a well-known linguist.
But Noam Chomsky’s studies and interests went far beyond the study of languages themselves. His first research, carried out at Harvard between 1951 and 1955, had implications for other topics that concern psychology, such as the processes by which language and mental structures can appear. This led him to confront the behavioral explanation of the appearance and learning of the languages supported by BF Skinner, among others.
In the field of psycholinguistics, Noam Chomsky is known for his theory of Universal Grammar and his ideas about the development of language based on genetic inheritance, something that was used by evolutionary psychologists such as Steven Pinker to explain the nature of language in humans. Humans. You can read more about this topic in this article on Chomsky’s theories.
The activist Noam Chomsky
In parallel to all these research activities, Noam Chomsky’s curiosity about issues related to politics and the development of capitalism did not cease. That is why this researcher He was combining his studies in linguistics with reading political essays writing reflections and articles and holding conferences in which he has been fiercely criticizing the system of structural relations and the distribution of wealth that he relates to the essence of capitalism, while also criticizing certain aspects from the left that he calls authoritarian.
Noam Chomsky has also put the policy of the United States and its repressive role at the international level as the target of his dialectical darts, favoring coups d’état and intervening militarily abroad for reasons that can hardly be related to self-defense. It is not surprising that he strongly opposed his country’s participation in the Vietnam War, for which he was arrested
Noam Chomsky today
In recent years, due to his advanced age, Noam Chomsky has retired from teaching, but continues to appear before the media to support new left-wing initiatives Since the 1990s, especially, Noam Chomsky has been focusing on commenting on the political agenda and the development of inequalities, something that has earned him quite a few enmities in a country as liberal as the United States.
The fact that he offers visibility to ideologies related to anarchism and that he has shown support for movements such as Occupy Wall Street has made him a person who, despite not being excessively pampered by the mainstream media, arouses a lot of interest.
Noam Chomsky has also remarried, after the death of his first wife in 2008. His current partner is called Valeria Wasserman.
