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Main page » Non-Fiction » Science literature » Linguistics » Noam Chomsky (Reaktion Books - Critical Lives)


Noam Chomsky (Reaktion Books - Critical Lives)

 
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“The intellectual tradition is one of servility to power, and if I didn’t betray it I’d be ashamed of myself.” This declaration by Noam Chomsky exemplifies the uncompromising radicalism that has long defined his life and work. A linguist, philosopher, prolific author, and political activist, Chomsky is one of the most influential Western intellectuals of the last half-century. Yet it is this very capaciousness that biographers and interpreters have struggled with, and as a result, there are very few readable accounts of Chomsky and his project. Wolfgang B. Sperlich surmounts this challenge with his succinct yet in-depth introduction to the thinker in Noam Chomsky, one of the new titles in the acclaimed Critical Lives series. 

Beginning with Chomsky’s formative years as a sixteen-year-old student at the University of Pennsylvania, Sperlich traces his education in linguistics and politics in its rich historical context. He explores Chomsky’s main intellectual influences, particularly in language studies, and charts his strained relationship with mainstream American academia. Sperlich also offers an informed overview of Chomsky’s landmark linguistic contributions as a comprehensive introduction to his work, and he explains the latest developments in Chomskyan linguistics and how they influence research in fields as varied as neuroscience, biology, and evolution. Sperlich is equally attentive to Chomsky's political activism: through Sperlich’s account we follow Chomsky from his pacifist-anarchist lectures and writings of the 1950s and 1960s to his seminal 1988 treatise, Manufacturing Consent, and his relentless criticism of the American government over two decades. 

A compact and rich biographical study, Noam Chomsky is a brilliant introduction to one of the most polarizing intellectuals of our time, a thinker whose words continue to pierce the heart of public discourse.
(20060701)

"High thoughts must have high language." -- Aristophanes


Few of us have time to read an entire encyclopedia, and if anyone's life could fill one, it's Chomsky's.

It must have been a huge undertaking to write an introductory book on such a complex figure. Chomsky is primarily a linguist, but it is his controversial philosophical and political views that make him a household name. The trouble is, although so many of us know he is important, few of us know just why. This book comes to the rescue, unveiling the events that made the man whilst delving into his psyche.

To dumb down the subject would hardly be appropriate for anyone interested in Chomsky. Readers will thus be pleased to find the author freely expresses himself in true literati style. The academic rigour provokes much insightful discussion, and yet the subject is kept highly accessibile: there are interesting explanations on linguistics, and we learn about major figures in Chomsky's life, such as Orwell and Russell.

A linear account of his life is followed by a look at his contributions to linguistics and philosophy, and his consequent influence on politics and his relationship with the media -- all in a comprehensive 160 pages



  • Number Of Pages:   160
  • Publication Date:   2006-05-01
  • ISBN-10 / ASIN:   1861892691
  • ISBN-13 / EAN:   9781861892690



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Tags: Chomsky, Critical, Reaktion, thinker, intellectuals, Books, prolific, author, activist, political