Encyclopedia
Avram Noam Chomsky is the Institute Professor Emeritus of linguistics at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Chomsky is credited with the creation of the theory of
generative grammar, considered to be one of the most significant contributions to the field of theoretical linguistics made in the 20th century. He also helped spark the cognitive revolution in psychology through his review of
B.F. Skinner's
Verbal Behavior, in which he challenged the behaviorist approach to the study of mind and language dominant in the 1950s. His naturalistic approach to the study of language has also affected the
philosophy of language and
mind . He is also credited with the establishment of the Chomsky–Schützenberger hierarchy, a classification of formal languages in terms of their generative power.
Chomsky is widely known for his political activism, and for his criticism of the
foreign policy of the
United States and other governments. Chomsky describes himself as a
libertarian socialist and a sympathizer of
anarcho-syndicalism . He is generally considered to be a key intellectual figure within the left wing of
United States politics. According to the Arts and Humanities Citation Index, between 1980 and 1992 Chomsky was cited as a source more often than any other living scholar, and the eighth most cited scholar overall.
Biography
Chomsky was born in the East Oak Lane neighborhood of
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of
Hebrew scholar and
IWW member William Chomsky, who was from a town in
Ukraine. His mother, Elsie Chomsky , came from what is now
Belarus, but unlike her husband she grew up in the United States and spoke "ordinary New York English". Their first language was Yiddish, but Chomsky says 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 anti-Semitism in the mid-1930s, stating, "I don't like to say it but I grew up with a kind of visceral fear of Catholics. I knew it was irrational and got over it but it was just the street experience."
Chomsky remembers the first article he wrote was at the age of ten about the threat of the spread of
fascism, following the fall of Barcelona in the
Spanish Civil War. From the age of twelve or thirteen, he identified more fully with anarchist politics.
A graduate of Central High School of Philadelphia , in 1945 Chomsky began studying
philosophy and linguistics at the
University of Pennsylvania, learning from philosophers 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 . Chomsky subsequently reinterpreted these as operations on the productions of a context-free grammar . Harris's political views were instrumental in shaping those of Chomsky.
In 1949, Chomsky married linguist Carol Schatz. They have two daughters, Aviva and Diane , and a son, Harry .
Chomsky received his
Ph.D. in linguistics from the
University of Pennsylvania in 1955. He conducted much 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, perhaps his best-known work in linguistics.
Chomsky joined the staff of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1955 and in 1961 was appointed full professor in the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics . From 1966 to 1976 he held the Ferrari P. Ward Professorship of Modern Languages and Linguistics. In 1976 he was appointed Institute Professor. Chomsky has been teaching at MIT continuously for the last 50 years.
It was during this time that Chomsky became more publicly engaged in politics: he 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 in 1967. Since that time, Chomsky has become well known for his political views, speaking on politics all over the world and writing numerous books. His far-reaching criticism of US foreign policy and the legitimacy of US power has made him a controversial figure.
Chomsky has in the past received various death threats because of his criticisms of U.S foreign policy. He was on a list created by
Theodore Kaczynski, better known as the Unabomber, of planned targets; during the period that Kaczynski was at large, Chomsky had all of his mail checked for explosives. Chomsky also states that he frequently receives undercover police protection, in particular while on the MIT campus, though Chomsky himself states that he does not agree with the police protection.
Despite his criticisms, Chomsky has stated that he continues to reside in the United States because he believes it 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."
Chomsky travels frequently, giving lectures on politics. His lectures are often criticized as being unmoving. Chomsky has acknowledged this criticism, seeing it more as a virtue: "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.
In 2003 he was elected as a member of
Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts.
Contributions to linguistics
Syntactic Structures was a distillation of his book
Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory in which he introduces transformational grammars. The theory takes utterances to have a syntax which can be characterised by a formal grammar; in particular, a Context-free grammar extended with transformational rules. Children are hypothesised to have an innate knowledge of the basic grammatical structure common to all human languages . This innate knowledge is often referred to as universal grammar. It is argued that modelling 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.
The Principles and Parameters approach — developed in his Pisa 1979 Lectures, later published as
Lectures on Government and Binding — 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 , which are often likened to switches. In this view, a child learning a language need only acquire the necessary lexical items , 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 , are also pointed to as motivation for innateness.
More recently, in his Minimalist Program , 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 emphasises 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, often advocating
emergentist or
connectionist theories reducing language to an instance of general processing mechanisms in the brain.
Generative grammar
The Chomskyan approach towards syntax, often termed
generative grammar, though quite popular, has been challenged by many, especially those working outside the United States of America. Chomskyan syntactic analyses are often highly abstract, and are based heavily on careful investigation of the border between grammatical and ungrammatical constructs in a language. Such grammatical judgments can only be made accurately by a native speaker, however, and thus for pragmatic reasons such linguists often focus on their own native languages or languages in which they are fluent, usually
Spanish,
English,
French,
German,
Dutch,
Italian,
Japanese or one of the
Chinese languages. However, as Chomsky has said:
- The first application of the approach was to Modern Hebrew, a fairly detailed effort in 1949–50. The second was to the native American language Hidatsa , mid-50s. The third was to Turkish, our first Ph.D. dissertation, early 60s. After that research on a wide variety of languages took off. MIT in fact became the international center of work on Australian Aboriginal languages within a generative framework [...] thanks to the work of Ken Hale, who also initiated some of the most far-reaching work on Native American languages, also within our program; in fact the first program that brought native speakers to the university to become trained professional linguists, so that they could do work on their own languages, in far greater depth than had ever been done before. That has continued. Since that time, particularly since the 1980s, it constitutes the vast bulk of work on the widest typological variety of languages.
Sometimes generative grammar analyses break down when applied to languages which have not previously been studied, and many changes in generative grammar have occurred due to an increase in the number of languages analyzed. It is claimed that linguistic universals in semantics have become stronger rather than weaker over time. The existence of linguistic universals in syntax, which is the core of Chomsky's claim, is still highly disputed. Still, Richard Kayne suggested in the 1990s that all languages have an underlying Subject-Verb-Object word order . One of the prime motivations behind an alternative approach, the functional-typological approach or linguistic typology , is to base hypotheses of linguistic universals on the study of as wide a variety of the world's languages as possible, to classify the variation seen, and to form theories based on the results of this classification. The Chomskyan approach is too in-depth and reliant on native speaker knowledge to follow this method, though it has over time been applied to a broad range of languages.
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 modelling some aspects of human language requires a more complex formal grammar 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 .
His best-known work in
phonology is
The Sound Pattern of English, written with Morris Halle . Though extremely influential in its day, this work is considered outdated , and Chomsky does not publish on phonology anymore.
Contributions to psychology
Chomsky's work in linguistics has had major 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
language is learned by children and what, exactly, is the ability to use language. Many of the more basic principles of this theory 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 speculative explanation of language in 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. Accordingly, "If we hope to understand human language and the psychological capacities on which it rests, we must first ask what it is, not how or for what purposes it is used" . 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 underdetermination 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 . 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. 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 .
Opinion on criticism of science culture
Chomsky strongly disagrees with poststructuralist 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 understanding I may want. In contrast, no one seems to be able to explain to me why the latest post-this-and-that is other than truism, error, or gibberish, and I do not know how to proceed.
Chomsky has also commented on critiques of "white male science", stating that they are much like the
anti-Semitic and politically motivated attacks against "Jewish physics" used by the
Nazis to denigrate research done by Jewish scientists during the
Deutsche Physik or
Aryan Physics was the name given to a reactionary [i] movement in the German [i] ...
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.
Chomsky's 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. A number of 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 of
protein structures". The title of Jerne's Stockholm Nobel lecture was "The Generative Grammar of the Immune System".
Nim Chimpsky, a chimpanzee who according to some researchers learned 125 signs in ASL, was named in tribute to Noam Chomsky.
Political views
Noam Chomsky has been engaged in left wing political activism all of his adult life and expressed a wide range of opinions on politics and world events which are widely cited, publicized and discussed. Within the United States, many consider his views to be on the far end of the political spectrum, and thus outside the mainstream. Chomsky has in turn argued that his views are those which the powerful "don't want to be heard" and for this reason he is often termed and considered an American political dissident. Some highlights of his political views:
- Much of his political writings offer very strong criticisms of the foreign policy of the United States. Specifically, he denounces what he considers to be the "double standards" of the US government, which he claims results in massive human rights violations. While the U.S. may preach democracy and freedom for all, Chomsky argues, America has a history of doing exactly the opposite, and promoting and allying with anti-democratic and violent movements and leaders.
- He has argued that the mass media in the United States largely serves as a propaganda arm of the U.S. government and U.S. corporations, with the three parties all largely intertwined through common interests. He has famously said that the American media "manufactures consent" among the public.
- He has opposed the U.S. global war on drugs
The
War on Drugs is an initiative undertaken by the United States [i] to carry out an "all-out offensi ...
, claiming its language to be misleading, and referring to it as "The war on certain drugs". He favors education and prevention in the issue, as opposed to military and police action.
Capitalism is an economic system [i] in which the means of production [i] are owned mostly privately, ...
system and big business, he describes himself as a
libertarian socialist who sympathizes with
anarcho-syndicalism and is highly 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. 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." .
- 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. 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.
- He has a view of broad free-speech rights, especially in the mass media; he opposes censorship.
Chomsky has made connections between his linguistics research and more political topics. An example is a 1971 debate with French philosopher
Michel Foucault on the question of human nature, where Chomsky used the idea of innate linguistic capacity to criticise the idea that all human values and knowledge are entirely conditioned by societal conditions. However, Chomsky makes such connections only rarely, 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 of their ideas of social organization must be rooted ultimately in some concept of human nature and human needs.
On September 20, 2006, Venezuelan President
Hugo Chávez gave Chomsky's book entitled
a sales boost, raising it to first place on the Amazon.com bestsellers list after he recommended it during his speech at the
U.N. General Assembly. Chavez also stated that he regretted not being able to meet Chomsky before his death, not knowing he was still alive. Chomsky told the New York Times that he would be happy to meet with Chávez.
Criticism of Chomsky's politics
Chomsky has acquired many critics from both the right and left ends of the political spectrum. Despite his Jewish heritage, he has been accused of lending support to those accused of expressing
anti-semitic viewpoints for his defense of
Robert Faurisson's right to
free speech. In the late 1970s he was accused of apologism for the
Khmer Rouge, after he and Edward S. Herman had charged that certain widely publicized accounts in the Western media were distorted.
In May 2006, during a well attended speaking tour in
Lebanon, Chomsky met with Nabil Qauq, the
Hezbollah leader in Southern Lebanon, who took Chomsky, his wife, and fellow university professor Fawwaz al-Trabulsi on a tour of the now closed former
Israeli Al Khiam prison. This sparked criticism from many on the American right, center, and left.
Academic achievements, awards and honors
According to the Arts and Humanities Citation Index, between 1980 and 1992 Chomsky was cited as a source more often than any other living scholar, and the eighth most cited source overall.
In the spring of 1969 he delivered the
John Locke Lectures at
Oxford University; in January 1970 he delivered the
Bertrand Russell Memorial Lecture at
Cambridge University; 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"; and in 1997, The Davie Memorial Lecture on Academic Freedom in
Cape Town, among many others.
Noam Chomsky has received many honorary degrees from the most prestigious universities around the world, including the following: University of London, University of Chicago, Loyola University of Chicago, Swarthmore College, Delhi University, Bard College, University of Massachusetts, University of Pennsylvania, Georgetown University, Amherst College, Cambridge University, University of Buenos Aires, McGill University, Universitat Rovira I Virgili, Tarragona, Columbia University, University of Connecticut, Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, University of Western Ontario, University of Toronto, Harvard University, University of Calcutta, Universidad Nacional De Colombia, and Vrije Universiteit Brussel. 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" . Early in his career Chomsky was granted the prestigious MacArthur Award.
Chomsky was voted the leading living public intellectual in
The 2005 Global Intellectuals Poll conducted by the British magazine
Prospect. He reacted coolly, saying "I don't pay a lot of attention to polls" . In a list compiled by the magazine
New Statesman is a British [i] left-of-centre political magazine [i] published we...
in 2006, he was voted seventh in the list of "Heroes of our time".
References
Authors on Chomsky
- Pateman, Trevor . , Language in Mind and Language in Society.*
- Paradis, Michel . . Oxonian Review of Books 2005 4.3: 4-5
Bibliography
Linguistics
See a full bibliography on Chomsky's MIT homepage .
- Chomsky . Morphophonemics of Modern Hebrew. Master's thesis, University of Pennsylvania.
- Chomsky . Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory.
- Chomsky . Transformational Analysis. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania.
- Chomsky, Noam, Morris Halle, and Fred Lukoff . "On accent and juncture in English." In For Roman Jakobson. The Hague: Mouton
- Chomsky . Syntactic Structures. The Hague: Mouton. Reprint. Berlin and New York .
- Chomsky . Current Issues in Linguistic Theory.
- Chomsky . Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge: The MIT Press.
- Chomsky . Cartesian Linguistics. New York: Harper and Row. Reprint. Cartesian Linguistics. A Chapter in the History of Rationalist Thought. Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 1986.
- Chomsky . Topics in the Theory of Generative Grammar.
- Chomsky, Noam, and Morris Halle . The Sound Pattern of English. New York: Harper & Row.
- Chomsky . Language and Mind.
- Chomsky . Studies on Semantics in Generative Grammar.
- Chomsky . The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory.
- Chomsky . Reflections on Language.
- Chomsky . Essays on Form and Interpretation.
- Chomsky . Morphophonemics of Modern Hebrew.
- Chomsky . Rules and Representations.
- Chomsky . Lectures on Government and Binding: The Pisa Lectures. Holland: Foris Publications. Reprint. 7th Edition. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1993.
- Chomsky . Some Concepts and Consequences of the Theory of Government and Binding.
- Chomsky . Language and the Study of Mind.
- Chomsky . Noam Chomsky on The Generative Enterprise, A discussion with Riny Hyybregts and Henk van Riemsdijk.
- Chomsky . Modular Approaches to the Study of the Mind.
- Chomsky . Knowledge of Language: Its Nature, Origin, and Use.
- Chomsky . Barriers. Linguistic Inquiry Monograph Thirteen. Cambridge, MA and London: The MIT Press.
- Chomsky . Language and Thought.
- Chomsky . The Minimalist Program. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
- Chomsky . On Language.
- Chomsky . New Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind.
- Chomsky . The Architecture of Language .
- Chomsky . On Nature and Language .
Computer science
- Chomsky . Three models for the description of language. I.R.E. Transactions on Information Theory, vol. IT-2, no. 3: 113-24.
Politics
- . American Power and the New Mandarins
- . "Notes on Anarchism", New York Review of Books
- . At war with Asia
- . Two Essays on Cambodia
- . Chomsky: selected readings
- . Problems of Knowledge and Freedom
- . For Reasons of State
- . Peace in the Middle East? Reflections on Justice and Nationhood
- . Intellectuals and the State
- . Human Rights and American Foreign Policy
- . After the Cataclysm: Postwar Indochina and the Reconstruction of Imperial Ideology
- . Language and Responsibility
- . The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism
- . Radical Priorities
- . Superpowers in collision: the cold war now
- . Towards a New Cold War: Essays on the Current Crisis and How We Got There
- .
- . Turning the Tide : U.S. intervention in Central America and the Struggle for Peace
- . Pirates and Emperors: International Terrorism in the Real World
- . The Race to Destruction: Its Rational Basis
- . The Chomsky Reader
- . On Power and Ideology
- . Turning the Tide: the U.S. and Latin America
- . The Culture of Terrorism
- . Language and Politics
- .
- . Necessary Illusions
- . Terrorizing the Neighborhood
- . What Uncle Sam Really Wants
- . Chronicles of Dissent
- . Deterring Democracy
- . Letters from Lexington: Reflections on Propaganda
- . The Prosperous Few and the Restless Many
- . Rethinking Camelot: JFK, the Vietnam War, and U.S. Political Culture
- . World Order and Its Rules: Variations on Some Themes
- . Year 501: The Conquest Continues
- . Keeping the rabble in Line
- . Secrets, Lies, and Democracy
- . World Orders, Old and New
- . Powers and Prospects: Reflections on Human Nature and the Social Order
- . Class Warfare
- . Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda
- . One Chapter, The Cold War and the University
- . The Culture of Terrorism
- . The New Military Humanism: Lessons from Kosovo
- . Profit over People
- . The Fateful Triangle
- . Rogue States
- . Propaganda and the Public Mind
- . 9-11
- . Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky
- . Media control
- .
- . Chomsky on Anarchism*. Imperial Ambitions - Conversations on the Post-9/11 World
- .
Biographies
Filmography
- , Director: Mark Achbar and Peter Wintonick
- Last Party 2000, Director: Rebecca Chaiklin and Donovan Leitch
- Power and Terror: Noam Chomsky in Our Times, Director: John Junkerman
- Distorted Morality — America's War On Terror?, Director: John Junkerman
- Noam Chomsky: Rebel Without a Pause , Director: Will Pascoe
- The Corporation is a 2003 [i] Canadian [i] documentary film [i] and book critica ...
, Director: Jennifer Abbott and Mark Achbar - Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land, Directors: Sut Jhally and Bathsheba Ratzkoff
Interviews
- Keeping the Rabble in Line
- Class Warfare
- The Common Good
- Propaganda and the Public Mind
- Imperial Ambitions - Conversations With Noam Chomsky On The Post-9/11 World
By others
- See complete list of interviews here:
See also
by
David HorowitzExternal links
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- , June 1, 2003 C-Span's Book TV
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- May 27, 2006 C-Span 2
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- on RBNLive
- -- September 22, 2006
