Noam Chomsky

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Noam Chomsky

On a visit to Vancouver, British Columbia in 2004

December 7, 1928 (age 85)
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United
Born
States
Other names Avram Noam Chomsky
University of Pennsylvania (B.A.)
Alma mater
1949, (M.A.) 1951, (Ph.D.) 1955
20th / 21st-century philosophy
Western philosophy
Generative linguistics, Analytic
School
philosophy
MIT (1955present)
Institutions
Linguistics
Metalinguistics
Psychology
Main interests
Philosophy of language
Philosophy of mind
Politics Ethics
Notable ideas [show]
[show]
Influences
Influenced
[show]
Website
chomsky.info
Era
Region

Avram Noam Chomsky (/nom tmski/; born December 7, 1928) is an American

linguist, philosopher,[20][21] cognitive scientist, logician,[22][23][24] political commentator and
activist. Sometimes described as the "father of modern linguistics",[25][26] Chomsky is also a
major figure in analytic philosophy.[20] He 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.[27]
Born to a middle-class Ashkenazi Jewish family in Philadelphia, Chomsky developed an
early interest in anarchism from relatives in New York City. He later undertook studies in
linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania, where he obtained his BA, MA, and PhD, while
from 1951 to 1955 he was appointed to Harvard University's Society of Fellows. In 1955 he
began work at MIT, soon becoming a significant figure in the field of linguistics for his
publications and lectures on the subject. He is credited as the creator or co-creator of the
Chomsky hierarchy, the universal grammar theory, and the ChomskySchtzenberger
theorem. Chomsky also played a major role in the decline of behaviorism, and was especially
critical of the work of B.F. Skinner.[28][29] In 1967 he gained public attention for his vocal
opposition to U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, in part through his essay The
Responsibility of Intellectuals, and came to be associated with the New Left while being
arrested on multiple occasions for his anti-war activism. While expanding his work in
linguistics over subsequent decades, he also developed the propaganda model of media
criticism with Edward S. Herman. Following his retirement from active teaching, he has
continued his vocal public activism, for instance supporting the anti-Iraq War and Occupy
movements.
Chomsky has been a highly influential academic figure throughout his career, and was cited
within the field of Arts and Humanities more often than any other living scholar between
1980 and 1992. He was also the eighth most cited scholar overall within the Arts and
Humanities Citation Index during the same period.[30][31][32][33] His work has influenced fields
such as artificial intelligence, cognitive science, computer science, logic, mathematics, music
theory and analysis, political science, programming language theory and
psychology.[32][33][34][35][36] Chomsky continues to be well known as a political activist, and a
leading critic of U.S. foreign policy, state capitalism, and the mainstream news media.
Ideologically, he aligns himself with anarcho-syndicalism and libertarian socialism.[37]

Contents

1 Early life
2 Rise to prominence
3 Linguistic theory
4 Political views
5 Debates
6 Personal life
7 Influence
8 Academic achievements, awards, and honors
9 Bibliography
10 See also
11 References
12 External links

Early life
Childhood: 192845
Avram Noam Chomsky was born on December 7, 1928, in the affluent East Oak Lane
neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.[38] His father was the Ukrainian-born William
"Zev" Chomsky, an Ashkenazi Jew who had fled to the United States in 1913 and his mother
was Elsie Simonofsky. Having studied at Johns Hopkins University, his father went on to
become school principal of the Congregation Mikveh Israel religious school, and in 1924 was
appointed to the faculty at Gratz College in Philadelphia. Independently, William researched
Medieval Hebrew, and would publish a series of books on the subject. William's wife, Elsie,
was born in Belarus. They met at Mikveh Israel, where both taught Hebrew language
classes.[39] Described as a "very warm, gentle, and engaging" individual, William placed a
great emphasis on educating people so that they would be "well integrated, free and
independent in their thinking, and eager to participate in making life more meaningful and
worthwhile for all", a view subsequently adopted by his son.[40]
"What motivated his [political] interests? A powerful curiosity, exposure to divergent opinions, and an
unorthodox education have all been given as answers to this question. He was clearly struck by the obvious
contradictions between his own readings and mainstream press reports. The measurement of the distance
between the realities presented by these two sources, and the evaluation of why such a gap exists, remained
a passion for Chomsky."
Biographer Robert F. Barsky, 1997.[41]

Noam was the Chomsky family's first child. His younger brother, David Eli Chomsky, was
born five years later. The brothers remained close, although David was more easy-going
while Noam could be very competitive.[42] Chomsky's parents' first language was Yiddish,
but Chomsky said it was "taboo" in his family to speak it. Unlike her husband, Elsie spoke
"ordinary New York English".[43] The brothers were raised in this Jewish environment, being
taught Hebrew and regularly discussing the political theories of Zionism; the family were
particularly influenced by the Left Zionist writings of Ahad Ha'am.[42] Being Jewish, Noam
Chomsky faced anti-semitism as a child, particularly from the Irish and German communities
living in Philadelphia; he recalls German "beer parties" celebrating the fall of Paris to the
Nazis.[44][45]
Noam described his parents as "normal Roosevelt Democrats", having a centre-left position
on the political spectrum, but he was exposed to far left politics through other members of the
family, a number of whom were socialists involved in the International Ladies' Garment
Workers' Union.[46] He was influenced largely by his uncle who owned a newspaper stand in
New York City where Jewish leftists came to debate the issues of the day.[45][47] Whenever
visiting his relatives in New York City, Chomsky frequented left-wing and anarchist
bookstores, voraciously reading political literature.[45][47] He later described his discovery of
anarchism as a "lucky accident", allowing him to become critical of other radical left-wing
ideologies, namely Marxism-Leninism.[48] Chomsky's primary education was at Oak Lane
Country Day School, an independent institution that focused on allowing its pupils to pursue
their own interests in a non-competitive atmosphere. It was here that he wrote his first article,
aged 10, on the spread of fascism, following the fall of Barcelona in the Spanish Civil War.
From the age of 12 or 13, he identified more fully with anarchist politics.[49][50] Aged 12, he
moved on to secondary education at Central High School, where he joined various clubs and

societies but was troubled by the hierarchical and regimented method of teaching that they
employed.[51]

University: 194555

Anarcho-syndicalist Rudolf Rocker (left) and English democratic socialist George Orwell
(right) were both strong influences on the young Chomsky. Their work convinced him that an
anarcho-syndicalist society was both possible and desirable.
Aged 16, in 1945 Chomsky embarked on a general program of study at the University of
Pennsylvania, where his primary interest was in learning Arabic. Living at home, he funded
his undergraduate degree by teaching Hebrew.[52] Although dissatisfied with the university's
strict structure, he was encouraged to continue by the Russian-born linguist Zellig Harris,
who convinced Chomsky to major in the subject.[53] Chomsky's BA honor's thesis was titled
"Morphophonemics of Modern Hebrew", and revised it for his MA thesis, which he attained
at Penn in 1951; it would subsequently be published as a book.[54][55] From 1951 to 1955 he
was named to the Society of Fellows at Harvard University while undertaking his doctoral
research.[56] Being highly critical of the established behaviourist currents in linguistics, in
1954 he presented his ideas at lectures given at the University of Chicago and Yale
University.[57] In 1955 he was awarded his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania for a
thesis setting out his ideas on transformational grammar; it would be published in 1975 as
The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory.[58]
In 1947, Chomsky entered into a romantic relationship with Carol Doris Schatz, whom he
had known since they were toddlers. They were married in 1949,[59] and remained together
until her death in 2008.[60] They considered moving to Israel, and in 1953 spent six weeks at
the HaZore'a kibbutz; although enjoying himself, Chomsky was appalled by the Jewish

nationalism and anti-Arab racism he encountered in the country, and the pro-Stalinist trend
that he thought pervaded the kibbutz's leftist community.[61]
On visits to New York City, Chomsky frequented the office of Yiddish anarchist journal
Freie Arbeiter Stimme, becoming enamored with the work of contributor Rudolf Rocker,
whose work introduced him to the link between anarchism and classical liberalism.[62] Other
political thinkers whose work Chomsky read included the anarchist Diego Abad de Santilln,
democratic socialists George Orwell, Bertrand Russell, and Dwight Macdonald, and works by
Marxists Karl Liebknecht, Karl Korsch, and Rosa Luxemburg.[63] His readings convinced him
of the desirability of an anarcho-syndicalist society, and he became fascinated by the
anarcho-syndicalist communes set up during the Spanish Civil War documented in Orwell's
Homage to Catalonia (1938).[64] He avidly read leftist journal Politics, remarking that it
"answered to and developed" his interest in anarchism,[65] as well as the periodical Living
Marxism, published by council communist Paul Mattick. Although rejecting its Marxist basis,
Chomsky was heavily influenced by council communism, voraciously reading articles in
Living Marxism written by Antonie Pannekoek.[66] He was greatly interested in the Marlenite
ideas of the Leninist League, an anti-Stalinist Marxist-Leninist group, sharing their views that
the Second World War was orchestrated by Western capitalists and the Soviet Union's "state
capitalists" to crush Europe's proletariat.[67]

Early career: 19551966

In 1955, Chomsky obtained a job as an assistant professor at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT), spending half his time on a mechanical translation project and the other
half teaching linguistics and philosophy.[68] He later described MIT as "a pretty free and open
place, open to experimentation and without rigid requirements. It was just perfect for
someone of my idiosyncratic interests and work."[69] In 1957 MIT promoted him to the
position of associate professor, while from 195758 he was also employed by New York
City's Columbia University as a visiting professor.[70] That same year, the Chomskys' first
child was born,[71] and he published his first work on linguistics, Syntactic Structures, a book
that radically opposed the dominant Harris-Bloomfield trend in the field. The response to
Chomsky's ideas ranged from indifference to hostility, and his work proved divisive and
caused "significant upheaval" in the discipline.[72] Linguist John Lyons later asserted that it
"revolutionized the scientific study of language."[73] From 195859 Chomsky was a National
Science Foundation fellow at Princeton University's Institute for Advanced Study.[74]
In 1959 he attracted further attention for his review of B.F. Skinner's 1957 book Verbal
Behavior in the journal Language,[75] in which he argued that Skinner ignored the role of
human creativity in linguistics.[76] Becoming an "established intellectual",[77] with his
colleague Morris Halle, he founded the MIT's Graduate Program in linguistics, and in 1961
he was made professor of foreign language and linguistics, thereby gaining academic
tenure.[78] He was appointed plenary speaker at the Ninth International Congress of Linguists,
held in 1962 at Cambridge, Massachusetts; the event established him as the de facto
spokesperson of American linguistics.[79] He continued to publish his linguistic ideas
throughout the decade, as Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (1966), Topics in the Theory of
Generative Grammar (1966), and Cartesian Linguistics: A Chapter in the History of
Linguistic Thought (1966).[80] Along with Halle, he also edited the Studies in Language
Series of books for Harper and Row.[81] He continued to receive academic recognition and
honors for his work, in 1966 visiting a variety of Californian institutions, first as the
Linguistics Society of America Professor at the University of California, and then as the

Beckman Professor at the University of California, Berkeley.[82] His Beckman lectures would
be assembled and published as Language and Mind in 1968.[83]

Rise to prominence
Anti-Vietnam War activism: 19671975
"[I]t does not require very far-reaching, specialized knowledge to perceive that the United States was
invading South Vietnam. And, in fact, to take apart the system of illusions and deception which functions
to prevent understanding of contemporary reality [is] not a task that requires extraordinary skill or
understanding. It requires the kind of normal scepticism and willingness to apply one's analytical skills that
almost all people have and that they can exercise."
Chomsky on the Vietnam War.[84]

1967 marked Chomsky's entry into the public debate on the United States' foreign policy.[85]
In February he published an influential essay in The New York Review of Books titled The
Responsibility of Intellectuals, in which he criticized the country's involvement in the
Vietnam War.[83][86] He expanded on his argument to produce his first political book,
American Power and the New Mandarins, which was published in 1969 and soon established
him at the forefront of American dissent.[87] In 1971 he gave the Bertrand Russell Memorial
Lectures in Cambridge, which were published as Problems of Knowledge and Freedom later
that year, while other political books at the time included At War with Asia (1970) and For
Reasons of State (1973).[88] Coming to be associated with the American New Left
movement,[89] he nevertheless thought little of prominent New Left intellectuals Herbert
Marcuse and Erich Fromm, and preferred the company of activists to intellectuals.[90]
Although he had initially arisen to attention for his political views in The New York Review of
Books, throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s, he was virtually ignored by the mainstream
press.[91]
Along with his writings, Chomsky also became actively involved in left-wing activism.
Refusing to pay half his taxes, in 1967 he publicly supported students who refused the draft,
and was arrested for being part of an anti-war teach-in outside the Pentagon.[92] During this
time Chomsky founded the anti-war collective RESIST along with Mitchell Goodman,
Denise Levertov, William Sloane Coffin, and Dwight Macdonald.[92] Supporting the student
protest movement, he gave many lectures to student activist groups, though questioned the
objectives of the 1968 student protests.[93] Along with colleague Louis Kampf, he also began
running undergraduate courses on politics at MIT, independent of the conservativedominated political science department.[94] His public talks often generated considerable
controversy, particularly when he criticized actions of the Israeli government and military.[95]
His political views came under attack from right-wing and centrist figures, the most
prominent of whom was Alan Dershowitz; Chomsky considered Dershowitz "a complete
liar" and accused him of actively misrepresenting his position on issues.[96] As a result of his
anti-war activism, Chomsky was arrested on multiple occasions, and U.S. President Richard
Nixon included him on his Enemies' List.[97] He was aware of the potential repercussions of
his activism, and so his wife began training to become an academic in order to support the
family in the event of Chomsky's unemployment or imprisonment.[98]
Although under some pressure to do so, MIT refused to fire him due to his influential
standing in the field of linguistics.[99] His work in this area continued to gain international

recognition: in 1967 the University of London awarded him an honorary D. Litt while the
University of Chicago gave him an honorary D.H.L.[100] In 1970, Loyola University and
Swarthmore College also awarded him honorary D.H.L.'s, as did Bard College in 1971, Delhi
University in 1972, and the University of Massachusetts in 1973.[101] In 1974 he became a
corresponding fellow of the British Academy.
Academy [102] Chomsky continued to write on the subject,
publishing Studies on Semantics in Generative Grammar (1972).[99] In 1971 he carried out a
televised interview with French philosopher Michel Foucault on Dutch television; he
h largely
agreed with Foucault's ideas, but was critical of post-modernism and French philosophy
generally, lambasting France as having "a highly parochial and remarkably illiterate
culture."[103]

Work on the media: 19761989

1976
This section requires expansion with: information on Manufacturing Consent and other
significant publications from this period. (September 2013)
Throughout the late 1970s and 1980s, Chomsky's publications expanded and clarified his
earlier work, addressing his critics and updating his grammatical theory.[104]
In 1979, Chomsky
sky and Herman published the two-volume
two
The Political Economy of Human
Rights,, comparing U.S. media reactions to the Cambodian genocide and the Indonesian
occupation of East Timor.. They argued that because Indonesia was a U.S. ally, U.S. media
ignored the East Timorian situation while focusing on that in Cambodia, a U.S. enemy.[105]
The following year, Steven Lukas wrote an article for the Times Higher Education
Supplement accusing Chomsky of betraying his anarchist ideals and acting as an apologist for
Cambodian leader Pol Pot.. Although Laura J. Summers and Robin Woodsworth Carlsen
replied to the article, arguing that Lukas completely misunderstood Chomsky and Herman's
work, Chomsky himself did not. The controversy damaged his reputation.[106] Chomsky
maintained that his critics printed lies about him to discredit his reputation.[107]
Although Chomsky had long publicly criticised Nazism and totalitarianism more generally,
his commitment to freedom of speech led him to defend the right of French historian Robert
Faurisson to advocate a position widely characterised as Holocaust denial.. Chomsky's plea
for the historian's freedom of speech would be published as the preface
preface to Faurisson's 1980
book Mmoire en dfense contre ceux qui m'accusent de falsifier l'histoire.
l'histoire.[108] Chomsky was
[109]
widely condemned for defending
defendi Faurisson.
France's mainstream press accused Chomsky
of being a Holocaust denier himself, and refused to publish his rebuttals to their
accusations.[110] The Faurrison Affair had a lasting, damaging effect on Chomsky's career;[109]
Werner Cohn's Partners in Hate: Noam Chomsky and the Holocaust Deniers contained
numerous falsified claims.[111]

Increased political activism: 1990present

1990
This section requires expansion with: information on Hegemony or Survival and other
important publications of this period, as well as his support for the antianti-Iraq War and
Occupy movements, and his retirement from full time teaching. (September 2013)
[112]
In the 1990s, Chomsky embraced political activism to a greater degree than before.
be

Chomsky at the World Social Forum (Porto Alegre) in 2003

His far-reaching criticisms of U.S. foreign policy and the legitimacy of U.S. power have
raised controversy.[113][114] Chomsky has received death threats because of his criticisms of
U.S. foreign policy.[115] He has often received undercover police protection at MIT and when
speaking on the Middle East, although he has refused uniformed police protection.[116] The
Electronic Intifada website claims that the Anti-Defamation League "spied on" Chomsky's
appearances, and quotes Chomsky as being unsurprised at that discovery or the use of what
Chomsky claims is "fantasy material" provided to Alan Dershowitz for debating him.
Amused, Chomsky compares the ADL's reports to FBI files.[117]
Chomsky resides in Lexington, Massachusetts, and travels, giving lectures on politics and
linguistics.

Linguistic theory
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.[118] He therefore argues that all humans share the same underlying linguistic
structure, irrespective of socio-cultural difference.[119] 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.[120]
Chomskyan linguistics, beginning with his Syntactic Structures, a distillation of his Logical
Structure of Linguistic Theory (1955, 75), challenges structural linguistics and introduces
transformational grammar.[121] This approach takes utterances (sequences of words) to have a
syntax characterized by a formal grammar; in particular, a context-free grammar extended
with transformational rules.
Perhaps his most influential and time-tested contribution to the field is the claim that
modeling knowledge of language using a formal grammar accounts for the "productivity" or
"creativity" of language. In other words, a formal grammar of a language can explain the
ability of a hearer-speaker to produce and interpret an infinite number of utterances, including
novel ones, with a limited set of grammatical rules and a finite set of terms. He has always
acknowledged his debt to Pini for his modern notion of an explicit generative grammar,
although it is also related to rationalist ideas of a priori knowledge.
A popular misconception is that Chomsky proved that language is entirely innate, and that he
discovered a "universal grammar" (UG). Chomsky simply observed that while a human baby
and a kitten are both capable of inductive reasoning, if they are exposed to exactly the same
linguistic data, the human will always acquire the ability to understand and produce language,

while the kitten will never acquire either ability. Chomsky labeled whatever the relevant
capacity the human has that the cat lacks as the language acquisition device
evice (LAD), and he
suggested that one of the tasks for linguistics should be to determine what the LAD is and
what constraints it imposes on the range of possible human languages. The universal features
that would result from these constraints are often termed
t
"universal
universal grammar"
grammar or UG.[122]
Though Chomsky generated the universal grammar theory with the belief that language is
uniquely human, a series of studies from various laboratories have shown the existence of
acquired language in several great ape species, including common
[127][128][129]
chimpanzees,[123][124][125][126][127
bonobos,[129][130] gorillas,[131] and orangutans.
orangutans [132]
Thus, great apes at least partially
ally possess whatever mental functions might underlie the LAD,
and are therefore important species of study for exploring the neural basis of language.
Chomsky's ideas have had a strong influence on researchers of language acquisition in
children, though many researchers in this area such as Elizabeth Bates[133] and Michael
Tomasello[134] argue very strongly against Chomsky's theories, and instead advocate
emergentist or connectionist theories, explaining language with a number of general
processing mechanisms in the brain that interact with the extensive and complex social
environment in which language is used and learned.

Generative grammar
Different grammatical deep structures of a sentence

Main article: Generative grammar

The Chomskyan approach towards syntax, often termed generative grammar,
grammar studies
grammar as a body of knowledge
knowledge possessed by language users. Since the 1960s, Chomsky
has maintained that much of this knowledge is innate, implying that children need only learn
certain parochial features of their native languages.[135] The innate body of linguistic
knowledge is often termed universal grammar.
grammar. From Chomsky's perspective, the strongest
evidence for the existence of Universal Grammar is simply the fact that children successfully
acquire their native languages in so little time. Furthermore, he argues that there is an
enormous gap between the linguistic stimuli to which children are exposed and the rich
linguistic
nguistic knowledge they attain (the "poverty
"
of the stimulus"" argument). The knowledge of
Universal Grammar would serve to bridge that gap.
Chomsky's theories have
ave been immensely influential within linguistics, but they have also
received criticism. One recurring criticism of the Chomskyan variety of generative grammar
is that it is Anglocentric and Eurocentric, and that often linguists working in this tradition
have a tendency to base claims about Universal Grammar on a very small sample of
languages, sometimes just one. Initially, the Eurocentrism was exhibited in an overemphasis
on the study of English. However, hundreds of different languages have now received at least
some attention within Chomskyan linguistic analyses.[136][137][138][139][140] In spite of the
diversity of languages that have been characterized by UG derivations, critics continue to
argue that the formalisms within Chomskyan linguistics are Anglocentric and misrepresent

the properties of languages that are structurally different from English.[141][142][143] Thus,
Chomsky's approach has been criticized as a form of linguistic imperialism.[144] In addition,
Chomskyan linguists rely heavily on the intuitions of native speakers regarding which
sentences of their languages are well-formed. This practice has been criticized on general
methodological grounds. Some psychologists and psycholinguists,[who?] though sympathetic
to Chomsky's overall program, have argued that Chomskyan linguists pay insufficient
attention to experimental data from language processing, with the consequence that their
theories are not psychologically plausible. Other critics (see language learning) have
questioned whether it is necessary to posit Universal Grammar to explain child language
acquisition, arguing that domain-general learning mechanisms are sufficient.
Today there are many different branches of generative grammar. One can view grammatical
frameworks such as head-driven phrase structure grammar, lexical functional grammar, and
combinatory categorial grammar as broadly Chomskyan and generative in orientation, but
with significant differences in execution.

Chomsky hierarchy
Main article: 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 modeling some aspects of human language
requires a more complex formal grammar (as measured by the Chomsky hierarchy) 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
(especially in compiler construction and automata theory).[145] Indeed, there is an equivalence
between the Chomsky language hierarchy and the different kinds of automata. Thus theorems
about languages are often dealt with as either languages (grammars) or automata.

Political views
Main article: Political positions of Noam Chomsky
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Chomsky's political views have changed little since his childhood.[146] His ideological
position revolves around "nourishing the libertarian and creative character of the human
being",[146] and he has described his beliefs as "fairly traditional anarchist ones, with origins
in the Enlightenment and classical liberalism."[147] He has praised libertarian socialism,[148]
and has described himself as an anarcho-syndicalist.[149] He is a member of the Campaign for
Peace and Democracy and the Industrial Workers of the World international union.[150]
Chomsky is also a member of the interim consultative committee of the International
Organization for a Participatory Society, which he describes as having the potential to
"...carry us a long way towards unifying the many initiatives here and around the world and
molding them into a powerful and effective force."[151][152] He advocates popular struggle for
greater democracy.[153] He has stated his opposition to ruling elites, among them institutions
like the IMF, World Bank, and GATT.[154]

Authority
Chomsky asserts that authority, unless justified, is inherently illegitimate, and that the burden
of proof is on those in authority. If this burden can't be met, the authority in question should
be dismantled. Authority for its own sake is inherently unjustified. An example given by
Chomsky of a legitimate authority is that exerted by an adult to prevent a young child from
wandering into traffic.[155] He contends that there is little moral difference between chattel
slavery and renting one's self to an owner or "wage slavery". He feels that it is an attack on
personal integrity that undermines individual freedom. He holds that workers should own and
control their workplace.[156]

Capitalism and socialism

Chomsky is critical of both the American state capitalist system[157] and the authoritarian
branches of socialism. He argues that libertarian socialist values are the proper extension of
classical liberalism to an advanced industrial context,[158] and that society should be highly
organized and based on democratic control of communities and work places. He views the
radical humanist ideas of his two major influences, Bertrand Russell and John Dewey, as
"rooted in the Enlightenment and classical liberalism, while retaining their revolutionary
character."[159]

United States foreign policy

Chomsky has strongly criticized the foreign policy of the United States. He claims double
standards in a foreign policy preaching democracy and freedom for all while allying itself
with non-democratic and repressive states and organizations such as Chile under Augusto
Pinochet and argues that this results in massive human rights violations. He often argues that
America's intervention in foreign nations including secret aid the U.S. gave to the Contras
in Nicaragua, an event he has been critical of fits any standard description of terrorism,[160]
including "official definitions in the US Code and Army Manuals in the early 1980s."[161][162]
Before its collapse, Chomsky also condemned Soviet imperialism; for example in 1986
during a question/answer following a lecture he gave at Universidad Centroamericana in
Nicaragua, when challenged about how he could "talk about North American imperialism and
Russian imperialism in the same breath," Chomsky responded: "One of the truths about the
world is that there are two superpowers, one a huge power which happens to have its boot on
your neck; another, a smaller power which happens to have its boot on other people's necks. I
think that anyone in the Third World would be making a grave error if they succumbed to

illusions about these matters."[163] Martha Nussbaum criticizes Chomsky for failing to
condemn atrocities by leftist insurgents because "for some leftists one should not criticize
one's friends, that solidarity is more important than ethical correctness."[164]

Free speech
Chomsky has a broad view of free-speech rights, especially in the mass media, and opposes
censorship. He has stated that "with regard to freedom of speech there are basically two
positions: you defend it vigorously for views you hate, or you reject it and prefer
Stalinist/fascist standards".[165] With reference to the United States diplomatic cables leak,
Chomsky suggested that "perhaps the most dramatic revelation ... is the bitter hatred of
democracy that is revealed both by the U.S. Government Hillary Clinton, others and also
by the diplomatic service."[166] Chomsky refuses to take legal action against those who may
have libeled him and prefers to counter libels through open letters in newspapers. One
example of this approach is his response to an article by Emma Brockes in The Guardian at
the end of October 2005, which alleged that he had denied the Srebrenica massacre in
1995.[167][168][169] At issue was Chomsky's attitude to the writings of journalist Diana
Johnstone on the subject.[170] His complaint prompted The Guardian to publish an apologetic
correction and to withdraw the article from the paper's website,[171] which remains available
on his own website.[172] Nick Cohen has criticised Chomsky for frequently making overly
critical statements about Western governments, especially the US, and for allegedly refusing
to retract his speculations when facts become available that disprove them.[173]

Debates
Chomsky has been known to defend vigorously and debate his views and opinions, in
philosophy, linguistics (Linguistics Wars), and politics.[20] He has had notable debates with
Jean Piaget,[174] Michel Foucault,[175] William F. Buckley, Jr.,[176] Christopher
Hitchens,[177][178][179][180][181] George Lakoff,[182] Richard Perle,[183] Hilary Putnam,[184] Willard
Van Orman Quine,[185][186] John Maynard Smith,[187] and Alan Dershowitz,[188] to name a few.
The Guardian said of Chomsky's debating ability, "His boldness and clarity infuriates
opponentsacademe is crowded with critics who have made twerps of themselves taking
him on."[189][190] In response to his speaking style being criticized as boring, Chomsky said,
"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."[191] "We don't want to be swayed by superficial eloquence, by
emotion and so on."[192]

Personal life
Chomsky endeavors to keep his family life strictly separate from his political activism and
career,[193] and considers himself "scrupulous at keeping my politics out of the
classroom."[194] He is uninterested in appearances and the fame that his work has brought
him.[195] He also has little interest in art and music, though he does enjoy reading non-fiction
literature.[196]
Chomsky is known for his "dry, laconic wit", although he has attracted controversy for
labeling established political and academic figures with terms like "corrupt", "fascist", and
"fraudulent".[197] When asked if he is an atheist, Chomsky replied "What is it that I'm

supposed to not believe in? Until you can answer that question I can't tell you whether I'm an
atheist."[198]
Chomsky was married to Carol Doris Schatz (Chomsky) from 1949 until her death in 2008.
They had 3 children together: Aviva, Diane and Harry.[199]

Influence
Chomsky's legacy is as both a "leader in the field" of linguistics and "a figure of
enlightenment and inspiration" for political dissenters.[200] Linguist John Lyons remarked that
within a few decades of publication, Chomskyan linguistics had become "the most dynamic
and influential" school of thought in the field.[201] Chomskyan models have been used as a
theoretical basis in various fields of study. 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[202] and has generated
interest among mathematicians, particularly combinatorialists. Some arguments in
evolutionary psychology are derived from his research results.[203]
Chomsky's work in linguistics has had implications for modern psychology.[35] Nim
Chimpsky, a chimpanzee who was the subject of a study in animal language acquisition at
Columbia University, was named after Chomsky in reference to his view of language
acquisition as a uniquely human ability.[citation needed] The 1984 Nobel Prize laureate in
Medicine and Physiology, Niels Kaj 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".[204] Computer scientist Donald Knuth read
Syntactic Structures during his honeymoon and was influenced by it. "I must admit to taking
a copy of Noam Chomsky's Syntactic Structures along with me on my honeymoon in 1961 ...
Here was a marvelous thing: a mathematical theory of language in which I could use a
computer programmer's intuition!"[205]

Academic achievements, awards, and honors

In early 1969, he delivered the John Locke Lectures at Oxford University; in January 1970,
the Bertrand Russell Memorial Lecture at University of Cambridge; 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"; in 1997, The Davie Memorial Lecture on Academic Freedom in Cape
Town,[206] in 2011, the Rickman Godlee Lecture at University College, London[207] many
others.[208]
Chomsky has received many honorary degrees from universities around the world, including
from the following:

Amherst College
Bard College
Central Connecticut State University
Columbia University
Georgetown University

Harvard University
Islamic University of Gaza
Loyola University Chicago
McGill University
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM)
National Tsing Hua University[209]
National University of Colombia
Peking University[210]
Rovira i Virgili University
Santo Domingo Institute of Technology
Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa
Swarthmore College
University of Bologna
University of Buenos Aires
University of Calcutta
University of Cambridge
University of Chicago
University of Chile
University of Colorado[211]
University of Connecticut
University of Cyprus
University of Delhi
University of La Frontera
University of London
University of Maine
University of Massachusetts Amherst
University of Pennsylvania
University of St. Andrews
University of Toronto
University of Western Ontario
Uppsala University
Villanova University
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 1999 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science, and
others.[212] 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" (in 1987 and 1989).[213]
He is a member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Department of Social
Sciences.[214]
In 2005, Chomsky received an honorary fellowship from the Literary and Historical
Society.[215] In 2007, Chomsky received The Uppsala University (Sweden) Honorary Doctor's

degree in commemoration of Carolus Linnaeus.[216] In February 2008, he received the

President's Medal from the Literary and Debating Society of the National University of
Ireland, Galway.[217] Since 2009 he is an honorary member of IAPTI.[218]
In 2010, Chomsky received the Erich Fromm Prize in Stuttgart, Germany.[219] In April 2010,
Chomsky became the third scholar to receive the University of Wisconsin's A.E. Havens
Center's Award for Lifetime Contribution to Critical Scholarship.[220]

The Megachile chomskyi holotype

Chomsky has an Erds number of four.[221]
Chomsky was voted the leading living public intellectual in The 2005 Global Intellectuals
Poll conducted by the British magazine Prospect. He reacted, saying "I don't pay a lot of
attention to polls".[222] In a list compiled by the magazine New Statesman in 2006, he was
voted seventh in the list of "Heroes of our time".[223]
Actor Viggo Mortensen with avant-garde guitarist Buckethead dedicated their 2006 album,
called Pandemoniumfromamerica, to Chomsky.[224]
On January 22, 2010, a special honorary concert for Chomsky was given at Kresge
Auditorium at MIT.[225][226] The concert, attended by Chomsky and dozens of his family and
friends, featured music composed by Edward Manukyan and speeches by Chomsky's
colleagues, including David Pesetsky of MIT and Gennaro Chierchia, head of the linguistics
department at Harvard University.
In June 2011, Chomsky was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize, which cited his "...unfailing
courage, critical analysis of power and promotion of human rights."[227]
In 2011, Chomsky was inducted into IEEE Intelligent Systems' AI's Hall of Fame for the
"significant contributions to the field of AI and intelligent systems".[228][229]
In 2013, a newly described species of bee was named after him: Megachile chomskyi.[230]

Bibliography
Main article: Noam Chomsky bibliography

Filmography

Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media,

Media Director: Mark Achbar and
Peter Wintonick (1992)
Last Party 2000,, Director: Rebecca Chaiklin and Donovan Leitch (2001)
Power and Terror: Noam Chomsky in Our Times,
Times Director: John Junkerman (2002)
Distorted Morality America's War On Terror?,
Terror?, Director: John Junkerman (2003)
Noam Chomsky: Rebel Without a Pause (TV), Director: Will Pascoe (2003)
The Corporation,, Directors: Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott;; Writer: Joel Bakan
(2003)
Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land,
Land Directors: Sut Jhally and Bathsheba
Ratzkoff (2004)
On Power, Dissent and Racism: A discussion with Noam Chomsky,
Chomsky, Journalist:
Nicolas Rossier; Producers: Eli Choukri, Baraka Productions (2004)
Lake of Fire,, Director: Tony Kaye (2006)
American Feud: A History of Conservatives and Liberals,
Liberals, Director: Richard Hall
(2008)
Chomsky & Cie,, Director: Olivier Azam (out in 2008)
An Inconvenient Tax,, Director: Christopher P. Marshall (out in 2009)
The Money Fix, Director: Alan Rosenblith (2009)
Pax Americana and the Weaponization of Space,
Space Director: Denis Delestrac (2010)
Article 12: Waking up in a surveillance society,
society, Director: Juan Manuel Biai (2010)
In 2012, Chomsky performed a deadpan cameo role in "MIT
MIT Gangnam Style",
Style a
[231]
parody of the "Gangnam
Gangnam Style"
Style music video.
Also known informally as "Chomsky
Style";[232] the video was described as the "Best Gangnam Style Parody Yet" by The
Huffington Post[232] and it became a multi-million
multi million viewed "most popular" video on
YouTube in its own right. (video link)[233]
Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy?,
Happy? Director: Michel Gondry (2013)

We Are Many,, Director: Amir Amirani (2014)

See also

American philosophy
Axiom of categoricity
The Anti-Chomsky
Chomsky Reader
Judith Chomsky
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously
English studies
Knowledge worker
List of American philosophers
List of important publications in computability
List of peace activists

Anarchism portal

Liberalism portal

Linguistics portal

Mind and Brain portal

Psychology portal

Socialism portal

References
Footnotes
1. Safty 1994.
2. Noam Chomsky (September 22, 2011). Noam Chomsky on the Responsibility of
Intellectuals: Redux.. Ideas Matter. Event
Event occurs at 09:23. Retrieved October 16, 2011.
3. Barsky, Robert F. "Chomsky and Bertrand Russell".
Russell" Noam Chomsky: A Life of
Dissent.. Retrieved October 29, 2011.
4. Chomsky, Noam (1996). Class Warfare: Interviews with David Barsamian.
Barsamian London:
Pluto Press. pp. 2829.
29. "The real importance of Carey's work is that it's the first effort
and until now the major effort to bring some of this to public attention. It's had a
tremendous
emendous influence on the work I've done."
5. Robert F. Barsky (1998). "3". Noam Chomsky: A Life of Dissent.. MIT Press. p. 106.
ISBN 9780262522557.
9780262522557
6. Wolfgang B. Sperlich (2006). Noam Chomsky.. Reaktion Books. pp. 4445.
ISBN 9781861892690.
9781861892690
7. Brent D. Slife (1993). Time and Psychological Explanation: The Spectacle
Sp
of Spain's
Tourist Boom and the Reinvention of Difference.
Difference SUNY Press. p. 115.
ISBN 9780791414699.
9780791414699
8. Carlos Peregrn Otero, ed. (1994). Noam Chomsky: Critical Assessments, Volumes 22
3.. Taylor & Francis. p. 487. ISBN 9780415106948.
9. "Noam Chomsky Reading List".
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11. Hugh LaFollette, Ingmar Persson, ed. (2013). The Blackwell Guide to Ethical Theory
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12. William D. Hart. Edward Said and the Religious Effects of Culture.
Culture. Cambridge
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13. Stephen Prickett (2002). Narrative, Religion and Science: Fundamentalism Versus
Irony, 1700-1999.. Cambridge University Press. p. 234. ISBN 9780521009836.
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14. John R. Searle (June 29, 1972). "A Special Supplement: Chomsky's Revolution in
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15. "Chomsky Amid the Philosophers".
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16. Gould, S. J. (1981). "Official Transcript for Gould's deposition
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19. Keller, Katherine (November 2, 2007). "Writer, Creator, Journalist, and Uppity
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20. "Noam Chomsky",, by Zoltn Gendler Szab, in Dictionary of Modern American
Philosophers, 18601960
1960,, ed. Ernest Lepore (2004). "Chomsky's intellectual life had
been divided between his work in linguistics and his political activism, philosophy
coming as a distant third. Nonetheless, his influence among analytic philosophers has

been enormous because of three factors. First, Chomsky contributed substantially to a

major methodological shift in the human sciences, turning away from the prevailing
empiricism of the middle of the twentieth century: behaviorism in psychology,
structuralism in linguistics and positivism in philosophy. Second, his groundbreaking
books on syntax (Chomsky (1957, 1965)) laid a conceptual foundation for a new,
cognitivist approach to linguistics and provided philosophers with a new framework
for thinking about human language and the mind. And finally, he has persistently
defended his views against all takers, engaging in important debates with many of the
major figures in analytic philosophy..."
21. The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy (1999), "Chomsky, Noam," Cambridge
University Press, pg. 138. "Chomsky, Noam (born 1928), preeminent American
linguist, philosopher, and political activist... Many of Chomsky's most significant
contributions to philosophy, such as his influential rejection of behaviorism... stem
from his elaborations and defenses of the above consequences..."
22. Edwin D. Reilly (2003). Milestones in Computer Science and Information
Technology. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 4344. ISBN 9781573565219. "In
1956, the logician Noam Chomsky showed that there are only four basically different
forms Church-Turing thesis of grammar, which, in decreasing order of sophistication,
he called grammars of Type 0, 1, 2, and 3.". Viewed July 15, 2012.
23. H. L. Somers (2003). Sergei Nirenburg, H. L. Somers, Yorick Wilks, ed. Readings in
Machine Translation. MIT Press. p. 68. ISBN 9780262140744. "I think that this
should be of sufficient interest to warrant some more detailed exhibition, especially
since this insight is due to an important new, not to say revolutionary, view of the
structure of language, recently outlined by the American linguist and logician Noam
Chomsky [2], and could perhaps, in its turn and in due time, be turned into a new
method of machine translation, which would be more complex than the known ones
but also more effective.". Viewed July 15, 2012.
24. Carlos Peregrn Otero, ed. (1994). Noam Chomsky: Critical Assessments, Volume 1;
Volume 3. Taylor & Francis. pp. 1415. ISBN 9780415106931. "Chomsky is a
professional linguist, a competent mathematical logician, and a trained methodologist
with a keen critical sense and an uncanny ability to follow the most abstruse
mathematical argument or, if necessary, to produce one himself."
25. Fox, Margalit (December 5, 1998). "A Changed Noam Chomsky Simplifies". New
York Times. Retrieved August 2, 2008. "... Noam Chomsky, father of modern
linguistics and the field's most influential practitioner; ..."[dead link]
26. Thomas Tymoczko, Jim Henle, James M. Henle, Sweet Reason: A Field Guide to
Modern Logic, Birkhuser, 2000, p. 101.
27. Duncan Campbell (2005-10-18). "Chomsky is voted world's top public intellectual |
World news". The Guardian. Retrieved 2013-05-29.
28. "Behaviorism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)". Plato.stanford.edu. Retrieved
2014-07-11.
29. Noam Chomsky (1971-12-30). "The Case Against B.F. Skinner, by Noam Chomsky".
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31. "Chomsky is Citation Champ". MIT News Office. April 15, 1992. Retrieved
September 3, 2007.
32. Hughes, Samuel (JulyAugust 2001). "Speech!". The Pennsylvania Gazette.
Retrieved September 3, 2007. "According to a recent survey by the Institute for
Scientific Information, only Marx, Lenin, Shakespeare, Aristotle, the Bible, Plato, and

Freud are cited more often in academic journals than Chomsky, who edges out Hegel
and Cicero."
33. Robinson, Paul (February 25, 1979). "The Chomsky Problem". The New York Times.
"Judged in terms of the power, range, novelty and influence of his thought, Noam
Chomsky is arguably the most important intellectual alive today. He is also a
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34. Michael Sipser (1997). Introduction to the Theory of Computation. PWS Publishing.
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35. "The Cognitive Science Millennium Project". Cogsci.umn.edu. Retrieved August 16,
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36. Patel 2008, p. 240.
37. Chomsky, Noam (2013). On Anarchism. New York: New Press. ISBN 9781595589101.
38. Lyons 1978, p. xv; Barsky 1997, p. 9.
39. Barsky 1997, pp. 910.
40. Barsky 1997, p. 11.
41. Barsky 1997, pp. 3031.
42. Barsky 1997, pp. 1113.
43. "The Life and Times of Noam Chomsky, Noam Chomsky interviewed by Amy
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44. Barsky 1997, p. 15.
45. Kreisler 2002.
46. Barsky 1997, p. 14.
47. Barsky 1997, p. 23.
48. Barsky 1997, pp. 1719.
49. Lyons 1978, p. xv; Barsky 1997, pp. 1517.
50. Kreisler 2002, Chapter 1: Background
51. Lyons 1978, p. xv; Barsky 1997, pp. 2122.
52. Barksy 1997, p. 47.
53. Barksy 1997, pp. 4851.
54. Barksy 1997, pp. 5152.
55. Zoltn Gendler Szab (2004). "Noam Chomsky". In LePore, Ernest. Dictionary of
Modern American Philosophers, 1860-1960.
56. Lyons 1978, p. xv; Barksy 1997, p. 79.
57. Barsky 1997, p. 81.
58. Barsky 1997, pp. 8385.
59. Barksy 1997, pp. 13, 48, 5152.
60. Marquard, Bryan (December 20, 2008). "Carol Chomsky; at 78; Harvard language
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61. Barksy 1996, p. 82.
62. Barsky 1997, p. 24.
63. Barsky 1997, pp. 2425.
64. Barsky 1997, p. 26.
65. Barsky 1997, pp. 3435.
66. Barsky 1997, pp. 3640.
67. Barsky 1997, pp. 4344.
68. Lyons 1978, p. xv; Barksy 1997, pp. 8687.
69. Barksy 1997, p. 87.
70. Lyons 1978, p. xvi; Barsky 1997, p. 91.

71. Barsky 1997, p. 91.

72. Barksy 1997, pp. 8891.
73. Lyons 1978, p. 1.
74. Lyons 1978, p. xvi; Barsky 1997, p. 84.
75. Chomsky 1959.
76. Lyons 1978, p. 6; Barksy 1997, pp. 9699.
77. Barksy 1997, p. 119.
78. Barksy 1997, pp. 101102, 119.
79. Barsky 1997, p. 102.
80. Barsky 1997, p. 103.
81. Barsky 1997, p. 104.
82. Lyons 1978, p. xvi; Barsky 1997, p. 120.
83. Barsky 1997, p. 122.
84. Barsky 1997, p. 114.
85. Barsky 1997, p. 120.
86. Chomsky 1967.
87. Lyons 1978, p. xvii; Barsky 1997, pp. 122123.
88. Lyons 1978, p. xvixvii; Barsky 1997, p. 163.
89. Lyons 1978, p. 5; Barsky 1997, p. 123.
90. Barsky 1997, pp. 134135.
91. Barksy 1997, pp. 162163.
92. Lyons 1978, p. 5; Barsky 1997, pp. 127129.
93. Barsky 1997, pp. 121122, 131.
94. Barsky 1997, p. 121.
95. Barksy 1997, pp. 167, 170.
96. Barksy 1997, pp. 170171.
97. Barsky 1997, p. 124.
98. Barsky 1997, pp. 123124.
99. Barsky 1997, p. 143.
100.
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101.
Lyons 1978, p. xvxvi; Barsky 1997, p. 143.
102.
Barsky 1997, p. 156.
Barsky 1997, pp. 192195.
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104.
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105.
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one that may well be the only alternative to the 'universal catastrophe' towards which
'we are driving on under full sail'..." Book Citation: Rudolph Rocker. AnarchoSyndicalism: Theory and Practice. AK Press. p. ii. 2004.
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157.
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Survival", chomsky.info, 7 April 2011
158.
"Government in the Future". 1970. Retrieved 9 April 2013. "I think that the
libertarian socialist concepts, and by that I mean a range of thinking that extends from
left-wing Marxism through anarchism, I think that these are fundamentally correct
and that they are the proper and natural extension of classical liberalism into the era of
advanced industrial society. In contrast, it seems to me that the ideology of state
socialism, that is, what has become of Bolshevism, and of state capitalism, the
modern welfare state, these of course are dominant in the industrial countries, in the
industrial societies, but I believe that they are regressive and highly inadequate social
theories, and that a large number of our really fundamental problems stem from a kind
of incompatibility and inappropriateness of these social forms to a modern industrial
society."
159.
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165.
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p. 167. ISBN 978-1-904859-20-8. Retrieved August 16, 2011.

166.
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Our Political Leadership"". Noam Chomsky website. Retrieved December 25, 2010.
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Camera)". Chomsky.info. Retrieved August 16, 2011.
170.
Ian Mayes "Open door", The Guardian, 12 December 2005
171.
"Corrections and clarifications". The Guardian. November 17, 2005. Retrieved
April 28, 2011.
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as reproduced on the Chomsky.info website
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September 24, 2001
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184.
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University, 2007.
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Chomsky"[dead link], October 2003.
186.
"The main reason I went" to Princeton, says Chomsky, was "to study with
Quine [....] I took all his courses and got to know him pretty well, though we
disagreed about almost everything."
187.
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196.
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13, 2003. Retrieved August 16, 2011.
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207.
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208.
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209.
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210.
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Retrieved August 16, 2011.
211.
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213.
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2011.
214.
Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts Department of Social Sciences
members Retrieved February 11, 2012
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16, 2011.
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217.
http://www.literaryanddebating.com/press/80-archbishop-desmond-tutu-tospeak-to-litndeb; excerpt:the Literary and Debating Society's President's Medal, the
society's achievement award, [has] been won in the past by the likes of Noam
Chomsky, Senator Mike Gravel, Congressman Bruce Morrison, journalist Fintan
O'Toole and, playwright, Tom Murphy.
218.
"Noam Chomsky, honorary member of IAPTI". Aipti.org. Retrieved August
16, 2011.[dead link]
219.
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Society. January 16, 2010. Retrieved April 5, 2010.
220.
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29, 2010. Retrieved August 16, 2011.

221.
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Project. Oakland University. Retrieved September 18, 2011.
222.
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223.
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August 16, 2011.
226.
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227.
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June 2, 2011. Retrieved August 16, 2011.
228.
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(4): 515. 2011. doi:10.1109/MIS.2011.64. edit
229.
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DigitalJournal.com. August 24, 2011. Retrieved September 18, 2011. Press release
source: PRWeb (Vocus).
230.
Sheffield 2013, p.56.
231.
Webster, Stephen C. (October 28, 2012). "Noam Chomsky appears in MIT
student's 'Gangnam Style' tribute". The Raw Story./
232.
"MIT 'Chomsky Style' Best Gangnam Parody Yet? Noted Intellectual Steals
The Wacky Show". The Huffington Post. 29 October 2012. Retrieved 29 October
2013.
233.
"MIT Gangnam Style (MIT )". YouTube. Retrieved 2012-11-04.

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Ferdinand de Saussure
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ferdinand de Saussure

Born
Died

26 November 1857
Geneva, Switzerland
22 February 1913 (aged 55)
Vufflens-le-Chteau
Chteau, Vaud,
Switzerland

19th-century
century philosophy
Western Philosophy
Structuralism,, semiotics
Linguistics
Semiology, langue and parole,
parole
synchronic
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Notable ideas
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Influences
[show]
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Influenced

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Signature

Semiotics

General concepts

Sign
o

Code

Confabulation

Connotation / Denotation

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ality
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(relation
relation

relational complex)
complex

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Ferdinand de Saussure

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v
t

Ferdinand de Saussure (/ssr/ or /sosr/; French: [fdin d sosy]; 26 November 1857

22 February 1913) was a Swiss linguist and semiotician whose ideas laid a foundation for
many significant developments both in linguistics and semiology in the 20th century.[2][3] He
is widely considered one of the fathers of 20th-century linguistics[4][5][6][7] and one of two
major fathers (together with Charles Sanders Peirce) of semiotics/semiology.[8]
One of his translators, Roy Harris, summarized Saussure's contribution to linguistics and the
study of language in the following way:
Language is no longer regarded as peripheral to our grasp of the world we live in, but as
central to it. Words are not mere vocal labels or communicational adjuncts superimposed
upon an already given order of things. They are collective products of social interaction,
essential instruments through which human beings constitute and articulate their world. This
typically twentieth-century view of language has profoundly influenced developments
throughout the whole range of human sciences. It is particularly marked in linguistics,
philosophy, psychology, sociology and anthropology.[9]
Although they have undergone extension and critique over time, the dimensions of
organization introduced by Saussure continue to inform contemporary approaches to the
phenomenon of language. Prague school linguist Jan Mukaovsk writes that Saussure's
"discovery of the internal structure of the linguistic sign differentiated the sign both from
mere acoustic 'things' ... and from mental processes", and that in this development "new roads
were thereby opened not only for linguistics, but also, in the future, for the theory of
literature."[10] Ruqaiya Hasan argues that "the impact of Saussures theory of the linguistic
sign has been such that modern linguists and their theories have since been positioned by
reference to him: they are known as pre-Saussurean, Saussurean, anti-Saussurean, postSaussurean, or non-Saussure."[11]

Contents

1 Biography
2 Legacy
o 2.1 Course in General Linguistics
o 2.2 Laryngeal theory
o 2.3 Later critics
o 2.4 Semiology
o 2.5 Influence outside linguistics
3 Works
4 See also
5 Citations
6 References
7 External links

Biography

Ferdinand Mongin de Saussure was born in Geneva in 1857. His father was Henri Louis
Frdric de Saussure, a mineralogist, entomologist, and taxonomist. Saussure showed signs
of considerable talent and intellectual ability as early as the age of fourteen.[12] After a year of
studying Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, and taking a variety of courses at the University of Geneva,
he commenced graduate work at the University of Leipzig in 1876.
Two years later at 21, Saussure published a book entitled Mmoire sur le systme primitif des
voyelles dans les langues indo-europennes (Dissertation on the Primitive Vowel System in
Indo-European Languages). After this he studied for a year at Berlin under the
'Privatdozenten' Heinrich Zimmer, with whom he studied Celtic, and Hermann Oldenberg,
with whom he continued his studies of Sanskrit.[13] He returned to Leipzig to defend his
doctoral dissertation De l'emploi du gnitif absolu en Sanscrit, and was awarded his doctorate
in February 1880. Soon afterwards, he relocated to Paris, where he lectured on Sanskrit,
Gothic and Old High German, and occasionally other subjects.
He taught at the cole pratique des hautes tudes for eleven years, during which he was
named Chevalier de la Lgion d'Honneur (Knight of the Legion of Honor).[14] When offered a
professorship in Geneva in 1891, he returned. Saussure lectured on Sanskrit and IndoEuropean at the University of Geneva for the remainder of his life. It was not until 1907 that
Saussure began teaching the Course of General Linguistics, which he would offer three times,
ending in the summer of 1911. He died in 1913 in Vufflens-le-Chteau, Vaud, Switzerland.
His son was the psychoanalyst Raymond de Saussure.
Saussure attempted at various times in the 1880s and 1890s to write a book on general
linguistic matters. His lectures about important principles of language description in Geneva
between 1907 and 1911 were collected and published by his pupils posthumously in the
famous Cours de linguistique gnrale in 1916. Some of his manuscripts, including an
unfinished essay discovered in 1996, were published in Writings in General Linguistics,
though most of the material in this book had already been published in Engler's critical
edition of the Course in 1967 and 1974. (TUFA)

Legacy
Saussure's theoretical reconstructions of the PIE vocalic system, and particularly his theory of
laryngeals otherwise unattested at the time, bore fruit and found confirmation after the
decipherment of Hittite in the work of later generations of linguists like Emile Benveniste and
Walter Couvreur, who both drew direct inspiration from their reading of the 1878
Mmoire.[15] Saussure also had a major impact on the development of linguistic theory in the
first half of the 20th century. His two currents of thought emerged independently of each
other, one in Europe, the other in America. The results of each incorporated the basic notions
of Saussure's thought in forming the central tenets of structural linguistics. His status in
contemporary theoretical linguistics is much diminished, with many key positions now dated
or subject to challenge.[citation needed]
Saussure posited that linguistic form is arbitrary, and therefore that all languages function in a
similar fashion. According to Saussure, a language is arbitrary because it is systematic, in that
the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.[clarification needed] Also, all languages have their
own concepts and sound images (or signifieds and signifiers). Therefore, Saussure argues,
languages have a relational conception of their elements: words and their meanings are

defined by comparing and contrasting their meanings to one another. For instance, the sound
images[clarification needed] for and the conception of a book differ from the sound images for and
the conception of a table. Languages are also arbitrary because of the nature of their linguistic
elements: they are defined in terms of their function rather than in terms of their inherent
qualities.[clarification needed] Finally, he posits, language has a social nature in that it provides a
larger context for analysis, determination and realization of its structure.[clarification needed]
In Europe, the most important work in this period of influence was done by the Prague
school. Most notably, Nikolay Trubetzkoy and Roman Jakobson headed the efforts of the
Prague School in setting the course of phonological theory in the decades following 1940.
Jakobson's universalizing structural-functional theory of phonology, based on a markedness
hierarchy of distinctive features, was the first successful solution of a plane of linguistic
analysis according to the Saussurean hypotheses. Elsewhere, Louis Hjelmslev and the
Copenhagen School proposed new interpretations of linguistics from structuralist theoretical
frameworks.
In America, Saussure's ideas informed the distributionalism of Leonard Bloomfield[16] and
the post-Bloomfieldian structuralism of such scholars as Eugene Nida, Bernard Bloch,
George L. Trager, Rulon S. Wells III, Charles Hockett, and through Zellig Harris the young
Noam Chomsky. In addition to Chomsky's theory of Transformational grammar, other
contemporary developments of structuralism included Kenneth Pike's theory of tagmemics,
Sidney Lamb's theory of stratificational grammar, and Michael Silverstein's work. Systemic
functional linguistics is a theory considered to be based firmly on the Saussurean principles
of the sign, albeit it some modifications. Ruqaiya Hasan describes systemic functional
linguistics as a 'post-Saussurean' linguistic theory.[11] Michael Halliday argues that:
Saussure took the sign as the organizing concept for linguistic structure, using it to
express the conventional nature of language in the phrase "l'arbitraire du signe". This
has the effect of highlighting what is, in fact, the one point of arbitrariness in the
system, namely the phonological shape of words, and hence allows the nonarbitrariness of the rest to emerge with greater clarity. An example of something that
is distinctly non-arbitrary is the way different kinds of meaning in language are
expressed by different kinds of grammatical structure, as appears when linguistic
structure is interpreted in functional terms [17]

Course in General Linguistics

Main article: Course in General Linguistics
Saussure's most influential work, Course in General Linguistics (Cours de linguistique
gnrale), was published posthumously in 1916 by former students Charles Bally and Albert
Sechehaye on the basis of notes taken from Saussure's lectures in Geneva. The Course
became one of the seminal linguistics works of the 20th century, not primarily for the content
(many of the ideas had been anticipated in the works of other 20th century linguists), but
rather for the innovative approach that Saussure applied in discussing linguistic phenomena.
Its central notion is that language may be analyzed as a formal system of differential
elements, apart from the messy dialectics of real-time production and comprehension.
Examples of these elements include his notion of the linguistic sign, which is composed of

the signifier and the signified. Though the sign may also have a referent, Saussure took this
last question to lie beyond the linguist's purview.

Laryngeal theory
While a student, Saussure published an important work in Indo-European philology that
proposed the
he existence of ghosts in Proto-Indo-European called sonant coefficients.
coefficients The
Scandinavian scholar Hermann Mller suggested that these might actually be laryngeal
consonants, leading to what is now known as the laryngeal theory.. It has been argued that the
problem Saussure encountered of trying to explain how he was able to make systematic and
predictive hypotheses from known linguistic data to unknown linguistic data stimulated his
development of structuralism.. Saussure's predictions about the existence of primate
coefficients/laryngeals and their evolution proved a resounding success when the Hittite texts
were discovered and deciphered, some 50 years later.

Later critics
The neutrality of this article is disputed.. Relevant discussion may be found on the
talk page.. Please do not remove this message until the dispute is resolved.
resolved (February
2014)

By the latter half of the 20th century, many of Saussure's ideas were under heavy criticism.
His linguistic ideas are still considered important for their time, but have suffered
considerably subsequently under rhetorical developments aimed at showing how linguistics
had changed or was changing with the times. As a consequence, Saussure's ideas are now
often presented by professional linguists as outdated and as superseded by developments such
as cognitive linguistics and generative grammar,
grammar, or have been so modified in their basic
tenets as to make their use in their original formulations
formulations difficult without risking distortion, as
in systemic linguistics.. This development is occasionally overstated, however; for example
Jan Koster states, "Saussure, considered the most important linguist of the century in Europe
until the 1950s, hardly plays a role in current theoretical thinking about language,"[18] More
accurate would be to say that Saussure's contributions have been absorbed into how language
is approached at such a fundamental level as to be, for many intents and purposes, invisible,
much like thee contributions of the Neogrammarians in the 19th century. Over-reactions
Over
can
also be seen in comments of the cognitive linguist Mark Turner[19] who reports that many of
Saussure's concepts were "wrong on a grand scale". Here it is necessary to be rather more
finely nuanced in the positions attributed to Saussure and in their longterm influence on the
development of linguistic theorizing in all schools; for a more up-to-date
up date re-reading
re
of
Saussure with respect to these issues, see Paul Thibault.[20] Just as many principles of
structural linguistics are still pursued, modified and adapted in current practice and according
to what has been learnt since about the embodied functioning of brain and the role of
language within this, so basicc tenets begun with Saussure still can be found operating behind
the scenes today.

Semiology
Saussure is one of the founding fathers of semiotics,, which he called semiology. His concept
of the sign/signifier/signified/referent forms the core of the field. Equally crucial, although

often overlooked or misapplied, is the dimension of the syntagmatic and paradigmatic axes of
linguistic description.

Influence outside linguistics

The principles and methods employed by structuralism were later adapted by French
Intellectuals in diverse fields, such as Roland Barthes, Jacques Lacan, and Claude LviStrauss. Such scholars took influence from Saussure's ideas in their own areas of study
(literary studies/philosophy, psychoanalysis, anthropology, respectively). However, their
analogous interpretations of Saussure's linguistic theories led to proclamations of the end of
structuralism in those two disciplines.[citation needed]

Works

Ferdinand de Saussure (2002). crits de linguistique gnrale. ISBN 978-2-07076116-6.

o This volume, which consists mostly of material previously published by
Engler, includes an attempt at reconstructing a text from a set of Saussure's
manuscript pages headed "The Double Essence of Language", found in 1996
in Geneva. These pages contain ideas already familiar to Saussure scholars,
both from Engler's critical edition of the Course and from another unfinished
book manuscript of Saussure's, published in 1995 by Maria Pia Marchese
(Phontique: Il manoscritto di Harvard Houghton Library bMS Fr 266 (8),
Padova: Unipress, 1995).
(1878) Mmoire sur le systme primitif des voyelles dans les langues indoeuropennes (Memoir on the Primitive System of Vowels in Indo-European
Languages), Leipzig: Teubner. (online version in Gallica Program, Bibliothque
nationale de France).
(1881) De l'emploi du gnitif absolu en Sanscrit: Thse pour le doctorat prsente
la Facult de Philosophie de l'Universit de Leipzig, (On the Use of the Genitive
Absolute in Sanskrit: Doctoral dissertation presented to the Faculty of Philosophy of
the Leipzig University) Geneva: Jules-Guillamaume Fick. (online version on the
Internet Archive).
(1916) Cours de linguistique gnrale, ed. C. Bally and A. Sechehaye, with the
collaboration of A. Riedlinger, Lausanne and Paris: Payot; trans. W. Baskin, Course
in General Linguistics, Glasgow: Fontana/Collins, 1977.
(1922) Recueil des publications scientifiques de F. de Saussure, ed. C. Bally and L.
Gautier, Lausanne and Geneva: Payot.
(1993) Saussures Third Course of Lectures in General Linguistics (19101911):
Emile Constantin ders notlarndan, Language and Communication series, volume. 12,
trans. and ed. E. Komatsu and R. Harris, Oxford: Pergamon.

See also

Axiom of categoricity
Leonard Bloomfield
Linguistics
Neogrammarians
Roman Jakobson

Signified
Structuralism

Citations
1. WFU | Le Francais Moderne Qu'est-ce que la sociolinguistique
2. Robins, R.H. 1979. A Short History of Linguistics, 2nd Edition. Longman Linguistics
Library. London and New York. p. 201. E.g. Robins writes Saussure's statement of
"the structural approach to language underlies virtually the whole of modern
linguistics".
3. Harris, R. and T.J. Taylor. 1989. Landmarks in Linguistic Thought: The Western
Tradition from Socrates to Saussure. 2nd Edition. Chapter 16.
4. Justin Wintle, Makers of modern culture, Routledge, 2002, p. 467.
5. David Lodge, Nigel Wood, Modern Criticism and Theory: A Reader, Pearson
Education, 2008, p. 42.
6. Thomas, Margaret. 2011. Fifty Key Thinkers on Language and Linguistics.
Routledge: London and New York. p. 145 ff.
7. Chapman, S. and C. Routledge. 2005. Key Thinkers in Linguistics and the Philosophy
of Language. Edinburgh University Press. p.241 ff.
8. Winfried Nth, Handbook of Semiotics, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1990.
9. Harris, R. 1988. Language, Saussure and Wittgenstein. Routledge. pix.
10. Mukarovsky, J. 1977. On Poetic Language. The Word and Verbal Art: Selected
Essays by Jan Mukarovsky. Translated and edited by J. Burbank and Peter Steiner. p.
18.
11. Linguistic sign and the science of linguistics: the foundations of appliability. In Fang
Yan & Jonathan Webster (eds.)Developing Systemic Functional Linguistics. Equinox
2013
12. , :
. . . (
: 60- .. ). 1972.
13. Joseph (2012:253)
14. Culler, p. 23
15. E.F.Konrad Koerner, 'The Place of Saussure's Memoire in the development of
historical linguistics,' in Jacek Fisiak (ed.) Papers from the Sixth International
Conference on Historical Linguistics,(Pozna, Poland, 1983) John Benjamins
Publishing, 1985 pp.323-346, p.339.
16. John Earl Joseph (2002). From Whitney to Chomsky: Essays in the History
OfAmerican Linguisitcs. John Benjamins Publishing. p. 139. ISBN 978-90-272-45922.
17. Halliday, MAK. 1977. Ideas about Language. Reprinted in Volume 3 of MAK
Halliday's Collected Works. Edited by J.J. Webster. London: Continuum. p113.
18. Koster, Jan. 1996. "Saussure meets the brain", in R. Jonkers, E. Kaan, J. K. Wiegel,
eds., Language and Cognition 5. Yearbook 1992 of the Research Group for Linguistic
Theory and Knowledge Representation of the University of Groningen, Groningen,
pp. 115120.
19. Turner, Mark. 1987. Death is the Mother of Beauty: Mind, Metaphor, Criticism.
University of Chicago Press, p. 6.
20. Thibault, Paul. 1996. Re-reading Saussure: The Dynamics of Signs in Social Life.
London: Routledge.

References

Culler, J. (1976). Saussure.

Saussure Glasgow: Fontana/Collins.
Ducrot, O. and Todorov, T. (1981). Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Sciences of
Language,, trans. C. Porter. Oxford: Blackwell.
Harris, R. (1987). Reading Saussure.
Saussure London: Duckworth.
Holdcroft, D. (1991). Saussure: Signs, System, and Arbitrariness.
Arbitrariness Cambridge
University Press.
, . (2008). (The
bulgarian students of Ferdinand de Saussure).
Saussure) ".
" (Sofia University Press).
Joseph, J. E. (2012). Saussure.
Saussure Oxford University Press.
Carol Sanders (2004-12
12-02). The Cambridge Companion to Saussure.
Saussure Cambridge
University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-80486-8.
Wittmann, Henri (1974). "New tools for the study of Saussure's contribution to
linguistic thought." Historiographia Linguistica 1.255-64. [1]

External links
French Wikisource has original text related to this article:
Auteur:Ferdinand de Saussure

Works by or about Ferdinand de Saussure in libraries (WorldCat catalog)

The poet who could smell vowels:
vowels an article in The Times Literary Supplement by
John E. Joseph, November 14, 2007.
Original texts and resources,
resources published by Texto, ISSN 1773-0120 (French).
Hearing Heidegger and Saussure by Elmer G. Wiens.
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Structuralism
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For other uses, see Structuralism (disambiguation).
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Structuralism is a theoretical paradigm in sociology, anthropology, linguistics and semiotics

positing that elements of human culture must be understood in terms of their relationship to a
larger, overarching system or structure. It works to uncover the structures that underlie all the
things that humans do, think, perceive, and feel. Alternatively, as summarized by philosopher
Simon Blackburn, Structuralism is "the belief that phenomena of human life are not
intelligible except through their interrelations. These relations constitute a structure, and
behind local variations in the surface phenomena there are constant laws of abstract
culture".[1]
Structuralism originated in the early 1900s, in the structural linguistics of Ferdinand de
Saussure and the subsequent Prague,[2] Moscow[2] and Copenhagen schools of linguistics. In
the late 1950s and early '60s, when structural linguistics was facing serious challenges from
the likes of Noam Chomsky and thus fading in importance, an array of scholars in the
humanities borrowed Saussure's concepts for use in their respective fields of study. French
anthropologist Claude Lvi-Strauss was arguably the first such scholar, sparking a
widespread interest in Structuralism.[1]
The structuralist mode of reasoning has been applied in a diverse range of fields, including
anthropology, sociology, psychology, literary criticism, economics and architecture. The
most prominent thinkers associated with structuralism include Lvi-Strauss, linguist Roman
Jakobson, and psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. As an intellectual movement, structuralism was
initially presumed to be the heir apparent to existentialism. However, by the late 1960s, many
of structuralism's basic tenets came under attack from a new wave of predominantly French
intellectuals such as the philosopher and historian Michel Foucault, the philosopher and
social commentator Jacques Derrida, the Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser, and the
literary critic Roland Barthes.[2] Though elements of their work necessarily relate to
structuralism and are informed by it, these theorists have generally been referred to as poststructuralists.
In the 1970s, structuralism was criticised for its rigidity and ahistoricism. Despite this, many
of structuralism's proponents, such as Jacques Lacan, continue to assert an influence on
continental philosophy and many of the fundamental assumptions of some of structuralism's
post-structuralist critics are a continuation of structuralism.[3]

Contents

1 Overview
2 Structuralism in linguistics

3 Structuralism in anthropology
4 Structuralism in literary theory and criticism
5 History and background
6 Interpretations and general criticisms
7 See also
8 Notes
9 Bibliography
10 Further reading

Overview
The origins of structuralism connect with the work of Ferdinand de Saussure on linguistics,
along with the linguistics of the Prague and Moscow schools. In brief, de Saussure's
structural linguistics propounded three related concepts.[1]
1. De Saussure argued for a distinction between langue (an idealized abstraction of language)
and parole (language as actually used in daily life). He argued that the "sign" was composed
of both a signified, an abstract concept or idea, and a "signifier", the perceived sound/visual
image.
2. Because different languages have different words to describe the same objects or concepts,
there is no intrinsic reason why a specific sign is used to express a given signifier. It is thus
"arbitrary".
3. Signs thus gain their meaning from their relationships and contrasts with other signs. As he
wrote, "in language, there are only differences 'without positive terms.'"[4]

As summarized by philosopher John Searle,[5] de Saussure established that 'I understand the
sentence "the cat is on the mat" the way I do because I know how it would relate to an
indefiniteindeed infiniteset of other sentences, "the dog is on the mat," "the cat is on the
couch," etc.'
The term "structuralism" itself appeared in the works of French anthropologist Claude LviStrauss. This gave rise, in France, to the "structuralist movement", which spurred the work of
such thinkers as Louis Althusser, the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, as well as the structural
Marxism of Nicos Poulantzas. Most members of this movement did not describe themselves
as being a part of any such movement. Structuralism is closely related to semiotics.
Blending Freud and de Saussure, the French (post)structuralist Jacques Lacan applied
structuralism to psychoanalysis and, in a different way, Jean Piaget applied structuralism to
the study of psychology. But Jean Piaget, who would better define himself as constructivist,
considers structuralism as "a method and not a doctrine" because for him "there exists no
structure without a construction, abstract or genetic".[6]
Michel Foucault's book The Order of Things examined the history of science to study how
structures of epistemology, or episteme, shaped the way in which people imagined
knowledge and knowing (though Foucault would later explicitly deny affiliation with the
structuralist movement).
In much the same way, American historian of science Thomas Kuhn addressed the structural
formations of science in his seminal work The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Though
less concerned with "episteme", Kuhn nonetheless remarked at how coteries of scientists

operated under and applied a standard praxis of 'normal science,' deviating from a standard
'paradigm' only in instances of irreconcilable anomalies that question a significant body of
their work.
Although the French theorist Louis Althusser is often associated with a brand of structural
social analysis which helped give rise to "structural Marxism", such association was
contested by Althusser himself in the Italian foreword to the second edition of Reading
Capital. In this foreword Althusser states the following:
"Despite the precautions we took to distinguish ourselves from the 'structuralist' ideology ...,
despite the decisive intervention of categories foreign to 'structuralism' ..., the terminology we
employed was too close in many respects to the 'structuralist' terminology not to give rise to
an ambiguity. With a very few exceptions ... our interpretation of Marx has generally been
recognized and judged, in homage to the current fashion, as 'structuralist'... We believe that
despite the terminological ambiguity, the profound tendency of our texts was not attached to
the 'structuralist' ideology."[7]
Proponents of structuralism would argue that a specific domain of culture may be understood
by means of a structuremodelled on languagethat is distinct both from the organizations
of reality and those of ideas or the imaginationthe "third order".[8] In Lacan's
psychoanalytic theory, for example, the structural order of "the Symbolic" is distinguished
both from "the Real" and "the Imaginary"; similarly, in Althusser's Marxist theory, the
structural order of the capitalist mode of production is distinct both from the actual, real
agents involved in its relations and from the ideological forms in which those relations are
understood.
According to feminist theorist, Alison Assiter, four ideas are common to the various forms of
structuralism. First, that a structure determines the position of each element of a whole.
Second, that every system has a structure. Third, structural laws deal with co-existence rather
than change. Fourth, structures are the "real things" that lie beneath the surface or the
appearance of meaning.[9]

Structuralism in linguistics
See also: Structural linguistics

In Ferdinand de Saussure's Course in General Linguistics (written by Saussure's colleagues

after his death and based on student notes), the analysis focuses not on the use of language
(called "parole", or speech), but rather on the underlying system of language (called
"langue"). This approach examines how the elements of language relate to each other in the
present, synchronically rather than diachronically. Saussure argued that linguistic signs were
composed of two parts:
1. a "signifier" (the "sound pattern" of a word, either in mental projectionas when one
silently recites lines from a poem to one's selfor in actual, physical realization as part of a
speech act)
2. a "signified" (the concept or meaning of the word)

This was quite different from previous approaches that focused on the relationship between
words and the things in the world that they designate.[10] Other key notions in structural
linguistics include paradigm, syntagm, and value (though these notions were not fully
developed in Saussure's thought). A structural "idealism" is a class of linguistic units
(lexemes, morphemes or even constructions) that are possible in a certain position in a given
linguistic environment (such as a given sentence), which is called the "syntagm". The
different functional role of each of these members of the paradigm is called "value" (valeur in
French).
Saussure's Course influenced many linguists between World War I and World War II. In the
United States, for instance, Leonard Bloomfield developed his own version of structural
linguistics, as did Louis Hjelmslev in Denmark and Alf Sommerfelt in Norway. In France
Antoine Meillet and mile Benveniste continued Saussure's project. Most
importantly,[according to whom?] however, members of the Prague school of linguistics such as
Roman Jakobson and Nikolai Trubetzkoy conducted research that would be greatly
influential. However, by the 1950s Saussure's linguistic concepts were under heavy criticism
and were soon largely abandoned by practicing linguists:
"Saussure's views are not held, so far as I know, by modern linguists, only by literary critics
and the occasional philosopher. [Strict adherence to Saussure] has elicited wrong film and
literary theory on a grand scale. One can find dozens of books of literary theory bogged down
in signifiers and signifieds, but only a handful that refer to Chomsky."[11]
The clearest and most important example of Prague school structuralism lies in phonemics.
Rather than simply compiling a list of which sounds occur in a language, the Prague school
sought to examine how they were related. They determined that the inventory of sounds in a
language could be analyzed in terms of a series of contrasts. Thus in English the sounds /p/
and /b/ represent distinct phonemes because there are cases (minimal pairs) where the
contrast between the two is the only difference between two distinct words (e.g. 'pat' and
'bat'). Analyzing sounds in terms of contrastive features also opens up comparative scopeit
makes clear, for instance, that the difficulty Japanese speakers have differentiating /r/ and /l/
in English is because these sounds are not contrastive in Japanese. Phonology would become
the paradigmatic basis for structuralism in a number of different fields.

Structuralism in anthropology
Main article: Structural anthropology

According to structural theory in anthropology and social anthropology, meaning is produced

and reproduced within a culture through various practices, phenomena and activities that
serve as systems of signification. A structuralist approach may study activities as diverse as
food-preparation and serving rituals, religious rites, games, literary and non-literary texts, and
other forms of entertainment to discover the deep structures by which meaning is produced
and reproduced within the culture. For example, Lvi-Strauss analyzed in the 1950s cultural
phenomena including mythology, kinship (the alliance theory and the incest taboo), and food
preparation. In addition to these studies, he produced more linguistically focused writings in
which he applied Saussure's distinction between langue and parole in his search for the
fundamental structures of the human mind, arguing that the structures that form the "deep

grammar" of society originate in the mind and operate in people unconsciously. Lvi-Strauss
took inspiration from mathematics.[12]
Another concept used in structural anthropology came from the Prague school of linguistics,
where Roman Jakobson and others analyzed sounds based on the presence or absence of
certain features (such as voiceless vs. voiced). Lvi-Strauss included this in his
conceptualization of the universal structures of the mind, which he held to operate based on
pairs of binary oppositions such as hot-cold, male-female, culture-nature, cooked-raw, or
marriageable vs. tabooed women.
A third influence came from Marcel Mauss (18721950), who had written on gift-exchange
systems. Based on Mauss, for instance, Lvi-Strauss argued that kinship systems are based on
the exchange of women between groups (a position known as 'alliance theory') as opposed to
the 'descent'-based theory described by Edward Evans-Pritchard and Meyer Fortes. While
replacing Marcel Mauss at his Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes chair, Lvi-Strauss' writing
became widely popular in the 1960s and 1970s and gave rise to the term "structuralism"
itself.
In Britain, authors such as Rodney Needham and Edmund Leach were highly influenced by
structuralism. Authors such as Maurice Godelier and Emmanuel Terray combined Marxism
with structural anthropology in France. In the United States, authors such as Marshall Sahlins
and James Boon built on structuralism to provide their own analysis of human society.
Structural anthropology fell out of favour in the early 1980s for a number of reasons.
D'Andrade suggests that this was because it made unverifiable assumptions about the
universal structures of the human mind. Authors such as Eric Wolf argued that political
economy and colonialism should be at the forefront of anthropology. More generally,
criticisms of structuralism by Pierre Bourdieu led to a concern with how cultural and social
structures were changed by human agency and practice, a trend which Sherry Ortner has
referred to as 'practice theory'.
Some anthropological theorists, however, while finding considerable fault with Lvi-Strauss's
version of structuralism, did not turn away from a fundamental structural basis for human
culture. The Biogenetic Structuralism group for instance argued that some kind of structural
foundation for culture must exist because all humans inherit the same system of brain
structures. They proposed a kind of Neuroanthropology which would lay the foundations for
a more complete scientific account of cultural similarity and variation by requiring an
integration of cultural anthropology and neurosciencea program that theorists such as
Victor Turner also embraced.

Structuralism in literary theory and criticism

Main article: Semiotic literary criticism

In literary theory, structuralist criticism relates literary texts to a larger structure, which may
be a particular genre, a range of intertextual connections, a model of a universal narrative
structure, or a system of recurrent patterns or motifs.[13] Structuralism argues that there must
be a structure in every text, which explains why it is easier for experienced readers than for
non-experienced readers to interpret a text. Hence, everything that is written seems to be

governed by specific rules, or a "grammar of literature", that one learns in educational

institutions and that are to be unmasked.[14]
A potential problem of structuralist interpretation is that it can be highly reductive, as scholar
Catherine Belsey puts it: "the structuralist danger of collapsing all difference."[15] An example
of such a reading might be if a student concludes the authors of West Side Story did not write
anything "really" new, because their work has the same structure as Shakespeare's Romeo and
Juliet. In both texts a girl and a boy fall in love (a "formula" with a symbolic operator
between them would be "Boy + Girl") despite the fact that they belong to two groups that
hate each other ("Boy's Group - Girl's Group" or "Opposing forces") and conflict is resolved
by their death. Structuralist readings focus on how the structures of the single text resolve
inherent narrative tensions. If a structuralist reading focuses on multiple texts, there must be
some way in which those texts unify themselves into a coherent system. The versatility of
structuralism is such that a literary critic could make the same claim about a story of two
friendly families ("Boy's Family + Girl's Family") that arrange a marriage between their
children despite the fact that the children hate each other ("Boy - Girl") and then the children
commit suicide to escape the arranged marriage; the justification is that the second story's
structure is an 'inversion' of the first story's structure: the relationship between the values of
love and the two pairs of parties involved have been reversed.
Structuralistic literary criticism argues that the "literary banter of a text" can lie only in new
structure, rather than in the specifics of character development and voice in which that
structure is expressed. Literary structuralism often follows the lead of Vladimir Propp,
Algirdas Julien Greimas, and Claude Lvi-Strauss in seeking out basic deep elements in
stories, myths, and more recently, anecdotes, which are combined in various ways to produce
the many versions of the ur-story or ur-myth.
There is considerable similarity between structural literary theory and Northrop Frye's
archetypal criticism, which is also indebted to the anthropological study of myths. Some
critics have also tried to apply the theory to individual works, but the effort to find unique
structures in individual literary works runs counter to the structuralist program and has an
affinity with New Criticism.

History and background

Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, existentialism, such as that propounded by Jean-Paul
Sartre, was the dominant European intellectual movement. Structuralism rose to prominence
in France in the wake of existentialism, particularly in the 1960s. The initial popularity of
structuralism in France led to its spread across the globe.
Structuralism rejected the concept of human freedom and choice and focused instead on the
way that human experience and thus, behavior, is determined by various structures. The most
important initial work on this score was Claude Lvi-Strauss's 1949 volume The Elementary
Structures of Kinship. Lvi-Strauss had known Jakobson during their time together at the
New School in New York during WWII and was influenced by both Jakobson's structuralism
as well as the American anthropological tradition. In Elementary Structures he examined
kinship systems from a structural point of view and demonstrated how apparently different
social organizations were in fact different permutations of a few basic kinship structures. In

the late 1950s he published Structural Anthropology, a collection of essays outlining his
program for structuralism.
By the early 1960s structuralism as a movement was coming into its own and some believed
that it offered a single unified approach to human life that would embrace all disciplines.
Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida focused on how structuralism could be applied to
literature.[citation needed][dubious discuss]
The so-called "Gang of Four" of structuralism was Lvi-Strauss, Lacan, Barthes, and
Foucault.[16]

Interpretations and general criticisms

Structuralism is less popular today than other approaches, such as post-structuralism and
deconstruction. Structuralism has often been criticized for being ahistorical and for favoring
deterministic structural forces over the ability of people to act. As the political turbulence of
the 1960s and 1970s (and particularly the student uprisings of May 1968) began affecting
academia, issues of power and political struggle moved to the center of people's attention.[17]
In the 1980s, deconstructionand its emphasis on the fundamental ambiguity of language
rather than its crystalline logical structurebecame popular. By the end of the century
structuralism was seen as an historically important school of thought, but the movements that
it spawned, rather than structuralism itself, commanded attention.[18]
Several social thinkers and academics have strongly criticized structuralism or even
dismissed it in toto. The French hermeneutic philosopher Paul Ricur (1969) criticized LviStrauss for constantly overstepping the limits of validity of the structuralist approach, ending
up in what Ricoeur described as "a Kantianism without a transcendental subject".[19]
Anthropologist Adam Kuper (1973) argued that "'Structuralism' came to have something of
the momentum of a millennial movement and some of its adherents felt that they formed a
secret society of the seeing in a world of the blind. Conversion was not just a matter of
accepting a new paradigm. It was, almost, a question of salvation."[20] Philip Noel Pettit
(1975) called for an abandoning of "the positivist dream which Lvi-Strauss dreamed for
semiology" arguing that semiology is not to be placed among the natural sciences.[21]
Cornelius Castoriadis (1975) criticized structuralism as failing to explain symbolic mediation
in the social world;[22] he viewed structuralism as a variation on the "logicist" theme, and he
argued that, contrary to what structuralists advocate, languageand symbolic systems in
generalcannot be reduced to logical organizations on the basis of the binary logic of
oppositions.[23] Critical theorist Jrgen Habermas (1985) accused structuralists, such as
Foucault, of being positivists; he remarked that while Foucault is not an ordinary positivist,
he nevertheless paradoxically uses the tools of science to criticize science[24] (see
Performative contradiction and FoucaultHabermas debate). Sociologist Anthony Giddens
(1993) is another notable critic; while Giddens draws on a range of structuralist themes in his
theorizing, he dismisses the structuralist view that the reproduction of social systems is
merely "a mechanical outcome".[25]

See also

Deconstruction

Engaged theory
Post-structuralism
Russian formalism
Structural functionalism
Structuralist film theory
Structuration theory, an attempt at a synthesis of structuralism and interpretive sociology

Notes
1. Blackburn, Simon (2008). Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, second edition revised. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-954143-0
2. Deleuze, Gilles. 2002. "How Do We Recognise Structuralism?" In Desert Islands and Other
Texts 1953-1974. Trans. David Lapoujade. Ed. Michael Taormina. Semiotext(e) Foreign
Agents ser. Los Angeles and New York: Semiotext(e), 2004. 170192. ISBN 1-58435-018-0: p.
170.
3. John Sturrock (1979), Structuralism and since: from Lvi Strauss to Derrida, Introduction.
4. F. de Saussure, Cours de linguistique generale, published by C. Bally and A. Sechehaye (Paris:
Payot, 1916); English translation by Wade Baskin, Course in General Linguistics (New York:
Philosophical Library, 1959), p. 120.
5. Searle, John R. (1983). "Word Turned Upside Down". New York Review of Books, Volume 30,
Number 16.
6. Jean Piaget, Le structuralisme, ed. PUF, 1968.
7. Louis Althusser and tienne Balibar. Reading Capital trans. Ben Brewster. London: NLB,
1970. p. 7.
8. Deleuze, Gilles. 2002. "How Do We Recognise Structuralism?" In Desert Islands and Other
Texts 1953-1974. Trans. David Lapoujade. Ed. Michael Taormina. Semiotext(e) Foreign
Agents ser. Los Angeles and New York: Semiotext(e), 2004. 170192. ISBN 1-58435-018-0: p.
171173.
9. Assiter, Alison (June 1984). "Althusser and structuralism". British Journal of Sociology
(London School of Economics) 35 (2): 272296. doi:10.2307/590235. JSTOR 590235.
10. Roy Suryo and Talbot Roosevelt, Landmarks in Linguistic Thought, 1st ed. [1989], pp. 178
179.
11. Holland, Norman N. (1992) The Critical I, Columbia University Press, ISBN ISBN 0-231-076509, p. 140.
12. Franois Dosse, History of Structuralism: Volume 1: The Rising Sign, 1945-1966, University of
Minnesota Press, 1997, p. 24.
13. Barry, P. (2002), 'Structuralism', Beginning theory: an introduction to literary and cultural
theory, Manchester University Press, Manchester, pp. 3960.
14. Selden, Raman / Widdowson, Peter / Brooker, Peter: A Reader's Guide to Contemporary
Literary Theory Fifth Edition. Harlow: 2005. p. 76.
15. Belsey, Catherine. "Literature, History, Politics". Literature and History 9 (1983): 1727.
16. Post-Structuralism LibGuides
17. J. D. Marshall (ed.), Poststructuralism, Philosophy, Pedagogy, Springer, 2004, p. xviii.
18. Alan Finlayson and Jeremy Valentine, Politics and post-structuralism: an introduction,
Edinburgh University Press, 2002, p. 8.
19. P. Ricur. (2004), The Conflict of Interpretations: Essays in Hermeneutics (originally
published in French in 1969 as Le conflit des interprtations: Essais dhermneutique).
Continuum, pp. 49, 78ff.
20. Kuper, Adam (1973), Anthropologists and Anthropology: The British School 192272,
Penguin, p. 206.

21. Pettit, Philip (1975), The Concept of Structuralism: A Critical Analysis, University of California
Press, p. 117.
22. C. Castoriadis (1987), The Imaginary Institution of Society (originally published in French in
1975 as L'institution imaginaire de la socit). Cambridge: Polity Press, p. 1167.
23. C. Castoriadis (1997), The Imaginary: Creation in the Social-Historical Domain. In: World in
Fragments. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 318.
24. Habermas, J. (1990), The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (originally published in
German in 1985 as Der Philosophische Diskurs der Moderne), MIT Press, 1990, p. 276.
25. Giddens, Anthony (1993), New rules of sociological method: A positive critique of
interpretative sociologies. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, p. 121.

Bibliography

Course in General Linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussure

Essais de linguistique gnrale, Roman Jakobson
The Elementary Structures of Kinship, Claude Lvi-Strauss
Structural Anthropology, Claude Lvi-Strauss
Mythologiques, Claude Lvi-Strauss
The Seminars of Jacques Lacan, Jacques Lacan
Reading Capital, Louis Althusser
S/Z, Roland Barthes
The order of things, Michel Foucault
quoi reconnat-on le structuralisme?, Gilles Deleuze (in: Histoire de la philosophie, Ides,
Doctrines. Vol. 8: Le XXe sicle, Hachette, Paris 1973, pp. 299335; edited by Franois
Chtelet)

Further reading

lisabeth Roudinesco, Philosophy in Turbulent Times: Canguilhem, Sartre, Foucault,

Althusser, Deleuze, Derrida, Columbia University Press, New York, 2008.
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