Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, logician, political commentator and activist. He was born on December 7, 1928 in Philadelphia to a middle-class Ashkenazi Jewish family with roots in Ukraine and Belarus.
Sometimes described as the “father of modern linguistics”, Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy. The basis to Chomsky’s linguistic theory is that the principles underlying the structure of language are biologically determined in the human mind and hence genetically transmitted. He therefore argues that all humans share the same underlying linguistic structure, irrespective of socio-cultural difference. In this he opposes the radical behaviourist psychology of B.F. Skinner, instead arguing that human language is unlike modes of communication used by any other animal species.
See how it goes in the following video when Chomsky is being interviewed about language by the notorious Ali G., who among other things manages to perplex the terms “bilingual” and “bisexual”:
Chomsky has spent most of his career at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he is currently Professor Emeritus, and has authored over 100 books. He has been described as a prominent cultural figure, and was voted the “world’s top public intellectual” in a 2005 poll. Read more about Noam Chomsky here.
Compiled by Claus Skovbjerg, MA, stagiaire communicateur at TermCoord