Chomsky Research Articles

Papua in Media: A Discourse Critical Analysis of Economic News in Three National Indonesian Newspapers

For so many years, peace in Papua has become a high critical thing in Indonesian politics. In order to find the solution, the paradigm has been shifted from security to welfare or economic approach. Article explored the impact of religion affiliation toward news making and news frame, especially in economic news published by mass media. This research was developed to explore the framing formed by three media outlets which each of them affiliated with certain religion. This research focused on the analysis of economic articles published by three media outlets; Sinar Harapan, Republika, and Kompas daily. The method of framing analysis was based on Robert N. Entman theory, while the critical discourse analysis method was based on Norman Fairclough theory. Political economics theories such as Vincent Mosco, Robert E. Babe, and D.W. Smythe to analyze the influence of religion affiliation in news production were also used. Meanwhile, some political communication theories such as Brian McNair, Dann Nimmo, Noam Chomsky and Denis McQuail were also used to know how media stands in Papua conflict. From the research, it is discovered that the religion affiliation has a big impact on news media and its content, and also the frame that is built. Not only political-economic matters, but "the-sense-of-belonging" of the owner through particular religion gives impact to media policy. The content and frame are finally influencing political communication in Indonesia in Papua conflict particularly.

Who Rules The World?

How to describe Noam Chomsky? A founding figure in modern linguistics, Chomsky has also made major contributions to philosophy, history, media criticism and social thought. With the publication of ...

Does a Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions Help in Ending Israel's Military Occupation of Palestinian Territories?

In fact, the defenders of Israel on campus are in deep trouble, not because student well-being is at risk but because the rickety assemblage of distortions and myths used to justify support for Israeli policies can't withstand scholarly scrutiny. Having lost the actual arguments, Israel's defenders have now declared war on argument itself.--Saree Makdisi, 2015 I begin below with a brief personal anecdote that seeks to answer the title's question in the strong affirmative. Ominously, there are efforts currently afoot in the Israeli Knesset and stateside in the U.S. (Salita 2014) to pass a specific law designed to punish any form of boycott by individuals or institutions against Israel. If this materializes, it will place freedom of expression in the public sphere in Israel in severe jeopardy. It also will blacklist many academics outside the country, preventing them from entering Israel, as was the exemplary case with Professor Noam Chomsky, scheduled to lecture at Birzeit University in Ramallah in May 2010, but denied entry. Although Chomsky calls for end of Israeli military occupation of Palestinian lands, he does not believe that a boycott is practical, and urges that efforts must focused more directly on ending the military occupation. In March 2013, I landed at Tel Aviv airport to attend the Diaspora Conference at An-Najah University, Nablus, West Bank. I was told by the conference organizers that transportation for me and other participants had been arranged. I could not rent a car from the airport and drive it through the Palestinian territories due to restrictions by the Israeli rental car companies related to lack of insurance coverage. After waiting for almost two hours at the airport, I was approached by a taxi driver of an Israeli firm who had been hired to drive me to an entry point to the West Bank, near the city of Qalqilya. As we approached the West Bank, he started coordinating my continuing trip to Nablus with another taxi driver coming from opposite direction to meet us on the western side of the Green Line boundary. I crossed the Green Line, entering the West Bank without inspection. Significantly, if I had come from the West Bank, seeking to enter Israel, I would have faced a regimen of strict inspection and questioning by Israeli border guards at the crossing point into Israel. From that point of entry to the West Bank, I continued my trip with the other taxi driver to Nablus. This second taxi had a Palestinian plate number. It would not have been allowed entry into Israel in any case. The grueling trip took almost four hours, crossing less than thirty miles. I am somehow privileged to be able to attend conferences on both sides of the Green Line, due to my Israeli citizenship along with my Canadian passport. The same is true for all Israeli scholars. This is not the case for Palestinian scholars residing in the West Bank or in Gaza Strip. For them, they cannot enter Israel without Israeli military permission, and entry is seldom granted without an exacting intelligent check. Israeli scholars enjoy the privilege of movement across the Israeli-imposed boundary lines inside Palestine/Israel and are able to drive through boundary crossing points smoothly. While Israeli academics have the luxury of organizing conferences inside their universities and do not experience any hassle along their path of producing knowledge, their counterparts in the Palestinian territories continue to endure the nightmare of the Israeli military occupation and in the case of Gaza, horrendous siege. Of course, many Israeli academics wish that Palestinians could come and participate in the Israeli university conferences and academic endeavors, but for their own political reasons and benefit. They expect the Palestinian participant to shut one eye to Israel's occupation of their lands and institutions while keeping the other eye open on what the conference entails. Such views are rarely openly expressed by Israeli academics. …

Sri Aurobindo’s Yogic Discovery of the ‘One Original Language’ of Mankind: A Linguistic Exploration

On a very high plane of yogic consciousness Sri Aurobindo discovers the existence of the ‘one original language’ of mankind. Such ‘one original language’ of mankind, he says, is based on certain eternal types of sound. It exists on the summit of spiritual consciousness, ‘Overmind Consciousness’ he terms it. It comes to be intelligible to the matter-oriented intellectual mind of linguistic world since Noam Chomsky finds mind at the centre of language, mind which is free from the ‘stimulus control’. Further, Ferdinand de Saussure’s linguistic vision of the existence of the basic structure of language gives an unmistakable indication of the linguistic base of the one original language, and, therefore, requires us to make a linguistic exploration to materialise this vision of the ‘one original language’ of mankind.

The Human Oscillome and Its Explanatory Potential

My intention in this piece is to briefly outline a novel hypothesis regarding the neurobiological implementation of feature-set binding, the labeling of featuresets, and the resolution of linguistic dependencies arising from the cyclic combination of these labeled objects. One of the numerous motivations for this was reading Robert C. Berwick & Noam Chomsky’s (BC henceforth WOU), which struck me as moderately comprehensive in its interdisciplinary scope (including good critical commentary on recent work in comparative neuroprimatology and theoretical biology) but severely impoverished in its range of linking hypotheses between these disciplines. While the authors are correct to point out that the Strong Minimalist Thesis follows the ‘divide-and-conquer’ approach which helps narrow the gap between disciplines, their actual implementation of this approach is fairly mild and uninstructive. There is lots of talk about how language is “an ‘organ of the body’, more or less on a par with the visual or digestive or immune system” and how it is “a subcomponent of a complex organism” (p. 56), accompanied by the usual discussion of the Newtonian dispelling of the mind–body problem—all of which is true, unequivocal, undeniable, but directionless and intensely vague. B&C discuss Lenneberg’s early work on language evolution, deeming it “a model of nuanced evolutionary thinking” (p. 5), but as Lenneberg (1964: 76) himself noted, “[n]othing is gained by labeling the propensity for language as biological unless we can use this insight for new research directions—unless more specific correlates can be uncovered”. The absence of concrete linking hypotheses between the domains of the life, cognitive, and biological sciences in WOU, and its concern with isolated and disparate sources of evidence which lend support to an emergentist model of language evolution, whatever its merits, does not promote this kind of cross-disciplinary collaboration. I think that from the perspective of brain dynamics, what the authors call the “Basic Property” (Merge) can be explored in a number of interesting and fruitful ways, promoting further interdisciplinary work and relying on a neurolinguistic perspective which, unlike WOU, goes beyond the cortex and examines the important role of subcortical structures like the thalamus and basal ganglia. To set the scene for what follows, it is useful to consider the framework in Boeckx & Theofanopolou (2015), which highlights the inadequacy of standard

The Unmaking of a Modern Synthesis: Noam Chomsky, Charles Hockett, and the Politics of Behaviorism, 1955–1965

A familiar story about mid-twentieth-century American psychology tells of the abandonment of behaviorism for cognitive science. Between these two, however, lay a scientific borderland, muddy and much traveled. This essay relocates the origins of the Chomskyan program in linguistics there. Following his introduction of transformational generative grammar, Noam Chomsky (b. 1928) mounted a highly publicized attack on behaviorist psychology. Yet when he first developed that approach to grammar, he was a defender of behaviorism. His antibehaviorism emerged only in the course of what became a systematic repudiation of the work of the Cornell linguist C. F. Hockett (1916-2000). In the name of the positivist Unity of Science movement, Hockett had synthesized an approach to grammar based on statistical communication theory; a behaviorist view of language acquisition in children as a process of association and analogy; and an interest in uncovering the Darwinian origins of language. In criticizing Hockett on grammar, Chomsky came to engage gradually and critically with the whole Hockettian synthesis. Situating Chomsky thus within his own disciplinary matrix suggests lessons for students of disciplinary politics generally and--famously with Chomsky--the place of political discipline within a scientific life.

Challenges to the What, When, and Why?

Why Only Us (WOU) is a wonderful, slim, engaging, and clearly written book by Robert C. Berwick and Noam Chomsky (B&C). From the authors’ perspective, it is a book about language and evolution. And of course it is. However, I think it is actually about something much bigger. It is an argument about the evolution of thought itself, with language being not only one form of thought, but a domain that can impact thought itself, in ways that are truly unique in the animal kingdom. Seen in this light, WOU provides a framework for thinking about the evolution of thought and a challenge to Darwin’s claim that the human mind is only quantitatively different from other animals. Since this is an idea that I have cham

Another look at the universal grammar hypothesis: Commentary on Evans 2014

Another look at the universal grammar hypothesis: Commentary on Evans 2014 Adele E. Goldberg It is important to recognize that The language myth (TLM) is not a research monograph, but is instead aimed at a popular audience, and therefore it should be judged in this light. Popular books necessarily oversimplify certain issues, on pain of not being very popular, yet TLM does satisfy its intended purpose: it demonstrates, in a clear and engaging way, that the existence of a universal grammar, involving structure or syntactic knowledge that is unique to language and not learned, is quite far from established fact (see also e.g. Ambridge et al. 2014, Christiansen & Chater 2008, Elman et al. 1996, Evans & Levinson 2009, Everett 2012, Goldberg 2013, 2016, Hurford 2012, Newmeyer 2016, Sampson 2005, Tomasello 1995). The position that TLM counters is no straw man, as the following easy-to-find quotes make clear (boldface added): Two facts about language learning are indisputable. First, only a human baby, but not her pet kitten, can learn a language. It is clear, then, that there must be some element in our biology that accounts for this unique ability. Chomsky’s Universal Grammar (UG), an innate form of knowledge specific to language, is a concrete theory of what this ability is. (Yang 2004:451) Generative linguistic theory stands on the hypothesis that grammar cannot be acquired solely on the basis of an analysis of the input, but depends, in addition, on innate structure within the learner to guide the process of acquisition. (Lidz et al. 2003:295) the most controversial claim of Noam Chomsky’s is that Language is also an instinct. Many parts of Language are built in, or innate. Much of Language is an ability hard-wired into our brains by our genes … . There are very good reasons to believe … that a human faculty for Language (perhaps in the form of a ‘Language organ’ in the brain) is innate. We call this facility Universal Grammar (or UG). (Carnie 2013:19) [End Page 200] Many of the familiar arguments in favor of a universal grammar are addressed and countered in TLM, and the book weaves together discussions drawn from research in linguistics, psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, and anthropology. Evans agrees that human language is distinct from animal communication in many ways, even while he draws certain parallels between them (Ch. 2). While it follows from this generally agreed-upon conclusion that humans’ general capacity for language is in some way unique to our species, it simply does not follow that any knowledge or structure that is specific to language need be ‘innate’ (cf. Adger 2015:77 and the first quote above). Instead, a combination of prerequisites for language may be required, prerequisites that need not themselves be specific to language and that may interact with one another and the environment in complicated ways (Ch. 4). This more subtle perspective concerning how phenotypes relate to genotypes has much evidence in its favor and is, in fact, uncontroversial within biology generally (see Blumberg 2005 for a popular overview). E addresses the issue of whether there exists evidence of provable (i.e. falsifiable) language universals in Ch. 3. He briefly surveys a range of work on absolute and implicational (i.e. ‘if a language has X, then it has Y’) universals, and covers topics ranging from phonology to syntax in clear and jargon-free prose. He concludes that falsifiable language universals are relatively rare and are typically explicable in terms of the functional pressures of communication as well as domain-general constraints (see also Newmeyer 2016). Ch. 4 focuses on language acquisition, emphasizing the role of statistics in the input, as well as the functions of constructions that are learned. This chapter also reviews some important evidence that human ‘cultural-intelligence’ serves as a key and uniquely human prerequisite for language (see also Ch. 8; and for relevant data, see Herrmann et al. 2007, Tomasello 2009). Ch. 5 discusses the neural underpinnings of language, emphasizing arguments against a modular linguistic system. Here it may be worth pointing out that even if there do exist areas in the typically developed adult brain that are devoted to language (as argued in Fedorenko et...

Propaganda 1776: Secrets, Leaks, and Revolutionary Communications in Early America by Russ Castronovo (review)

Reviewed by: Propaganda 1776: Secrets, Leaks, and Revolutionary Communications in Early America by Russ Castronovo William B. Warner (bio) Keywords Propaganda, Political communication, Discourse, Falsehood Propaganda 1776: Secrets, Leaks, and Revolutionary Communications in Early America. By Russ Castronovo. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. Pp. 235. Cloth, $25.00.) What would change if we viewed all political communication as propaganda? Would it release us from a normative liberal ideology, which assumes that political discourse should resemble a high-minded debating society, privilege rationality over affect, and trust that truth will prevail in [End Page 175] the marketplace of ideas? Could recognizing the ubiquity of propaganda overcome the commonplace that while our own fighting faiths appear to be grounded in political ideas, those of opponents appear part of a propagandistic effort to deceive, manipulate, and control? Could such a revaluation of propaganda allow new attention to the mechanics of how ideas are actually propagated and spread? This is the wager made by Russ Castronovo in his new book, Propaganda 1776. In this ambitious and lively book, Castronovo revisits episodes in the American Revolution and developments in recent media history (like Wikileaks and the ‘‘meme’’) and propaganda theory (from Edward Bernays and Walter Lippmann to Noam Chomsky) so as to develop a more inclusive conception of propaganda. Rather than use propaganda as an epithet to puncture the disinterested aura often attributed to the founders of the republic, as had Charles Beard, Arthur Schlesinger Sr., and other Progressive Era historians, Castronovo defines the reach of propaganda more broadly. While it is still essentially instrumental means of inducing a particular response, propaganda is not by this account under the exclusive control of a few at the top (from the Catholic church of Gregor XV to Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels). Instead propaganda can spread its messages through wider, popular, distributed means consistent with democracy, like the town meetings of Massachusetts (18-20). Propaganda is still anti-rhetorical for the way it influences rather than persuades, favors emotion over intellection, and often features ‘‘the vilification of opponents’’ (22). But Castronovo’s study emphasizes that propaganda is a process of ‘‘propagation’’ that exceeds the content of a message with its ways and means: It is kinetic, mobile, and often quite chaotic. Its effects overwhelm intention. To make his case for this expanded concept of propaganda, and to contest the idealistic pull of the ‘‘nationalist narrative’’ of the Revolution, Castronovo offers a fresh perspective on more or less familiar episodes in revolutionary communication. What comes into view is a not-so-pleasant underbelly of these communications. In 1773, Benjamin Franklin’s leaking of old letters of Massachusetts Governor Thomas Hutchinson helped to bring down the Hutchinson administration. (Castronovo compares this episode to the Wikileaks of Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange.) Mercy Otis Warren’s scurrilous attack upon Hutchinson in a closet drama titled The Adulateur, published in The Massachusetts Spy of March 26, 1773, features the Governor as ‘‘Rapatio.’’ Castronovo demonstrates, through database word searches, that over the next five years [End Page 176] there is a five-fold increase in the application of the words ‘‘rapacity’’ and ‘‘rapacious’’ to Royal officials in the colonial press (63). This is compellingly interpreted as a Revolutionary era ‘‘meme.’’ Less convincing for this reader is Castronovo’s effort to read the colonial resistance to the Tea Act not in local provincial terms, nor in terms of intra-imperial policy struggles, but in terms of a ‘‘view from below’’ (99) that opens, for the first time, a truly global perspective on the Revolution by framing the common predicament of East India and North America within the Empire, a perspective first developed most explicitly in the writings of Thomas Paine. But rather than seeing the tea resistance as the first glimmerings of the global perspective only actively assumed, in the wake of the Russian Revolution, by the Communist International, I would contextualize resistance to the tea by referring to the global imperial thinking evident in British writers in the wake of the Seven Years’ War such as Thomas Pownall Jr., Edmund Burke, and Benjamin Franklin. One of the most suggestive parts of Castronovo’s book deals with the forged letters...

Erratum to: The Responsibilities of Privilege: an Interview with Noam Chomsky on the Role of the Public Intellectual

Erratum to: The Responsibilities of Privilege: an Interview with Noam Chomsky on the Role of the Public Intellectual

Prophet, Gadfly, Polemicist, Conscience of America?

As a contribution to the scholarship on the US media's reporting of dissidence, this article assesses the treatment of Noam Chomsky's books on politics and media in four US newspapers. It documents and explains the fluctuations in attention over time. A content analysis shows that a sizeable majority of reviews were negative, but also that the press reception was quite varied. A qualitative assessment demonstrates that reviewers largely failed to provide substantive counterarguments to Chomsky's research and frequently praised it. The article discusses the newspapers’ weak and surprisingly positive reactions to Chomsky's media criticism. Then it draws parallels between the criticisms and marginalization of Chomsky in the press and academia, and highlights the evidence that confirms his analyses.

Romanticism, Anarchist Literary Theory, and George Dyer's Complaints of the Poor People of England

AbstractOver the past two decades, social movements have clearly shifted their philosophical bases from Marxism and toward anarchism. The rise of the global justice and Occupy Movement on the left – stimulated and expounded by influential modern theorists such as Noam Chomsky, Derrick Jensen, David Graeber, and the CrimethInc Ex‐workers Collective – and the rise of libertarianism on the right make evident the broader implications of this radical paradigm shift. Despite this clear sociopolitical trend, literary critics within academia appear oblivious to this change. Considering modern anarchism's historical roots beginning with the political writings of William Godwin, Romantic studies are seemingly well positioned to engage this growing field. Yet, with few exceptions, anarchist literary theory is absent from Marxist‐influenced contemporary Romantic studies. An anarchist theoretical approach allows for a reexamination of the Romantic era, offering new perspectives to canonical works while bringing minor works, such as the political writings of George Dyer, into a new light, while maintaining the vital currency of literary studies to a post‐Marxist audience.Over the past two decades, social justice movements have shifted their theoretical bases away from Marxism and toward a philosophical egalitarian anarchist foundation. The rise of several global justice movements on the left – stimulated and expounded by influential modern theorists such as Noam Chomsky, Derrick Jensen, David Graeber, and the CrimethInc. Ex‐workers Collective – and even the rise of libertarianism on the right make evident the broader implications of this radical paradigm shift. Despite this clear sociopolitical trend, literary critics within academia appear to be unaware of this anarchist turn. Considering modern anarchism's historical roots beginning with the political writings of William Godwin, Romantic scholars are seemingly well positioned to engage with this growing field. Though the study of Godwin himself shows no obvious sign of decline, the theoretical disconnect from an anarchist political theory he helped launch is interesting. Whereas Romantic studies has a long history examining various radicalisms and radical moments at length, little if any attention is paid to anarchism, an oddity considering the long shadow Godwin casts over the early Romantics. This dearth of anarchist‐related studies in the field translates into a near complete absence of anarchist literary theory in Romantic studies. With few exceptions, in particular the work of Jared McGeough, anarchist literary theory is nearly absent from contemporary Romantic studies, while Marxist studies remain strong. An anarchist theoretical approach allows for an iconoclastic reexamination of the Romantic era, offering new perspectives to canonical works while bringing minor works, such as the political writings of George Dyer, into a new light. A distinctly anarchist approach to Romanticism offers a new and vibrant currency to a contemporary audience less likely to see Marxism as the sole vehicle for radical analysis of any literary period, much less such a pivotal moment for anarchism: the Romantic era.

IGNORANCE AND HYPOTHESIS

1 3 4 Y I G N O R A N C E A N D H Y P O T H E S I S E D I S O N M I Y A W A K I If a creature were asked, ‘‘What’s your definition of science?’’ that intelligent being would do well to borrow Albert Einstein’s answer , from 1939, delivered at the Princeton Theological Seminary. Science, Einstein said, ‘‘is the attempt at the posterior reconstruction of existence by the process of conceptualization.’’ What creature really understands those words? It’s the kind of question that Noam Chomsky from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology asks in a short book that summarizes fifty years of his work in linguistics, brain and cognitive science, and political theory. Excluding notes and a thoughtful foreword by the philosopher Akeel Bilgrami from Columbia University, we get 127 pages in four chapters for twenty bucks. Is it a bargain? Let’s put Chomsky’s title in the form of a multiple-choice question , then think about Einstein’s definition with some care, just to get to the pith of Chomsky’s discussion as I understand it. First, the pop quiz: W h a t K i n d o f C r e a t u r e s A r e W e ? by Noam Chomsky (Columbia University Press, 167 pp., $19.95) 1 3 5 R Human beings are creatures who A. use language B. think, using language C. often don’t think particularly well Among the multiple choices, I don’t include the possibility that human beings attempt at the posterior reconstruction of existence by the process of conceptualization. Yet options A through C all have to do with Einstein’s definition of science, to the point where a person could wonder whether humans, alone among all creatures , are scientific. But one shouldn’t presume that we, alone among creatures, reliably excel at science, because of option C. I admire Einstein’s definition, because it assumes very little. He doesn’t say that our big human brains reconstruct existence. We attempt at rebuilding existing things – meaning, I think, that if I gaze out of my window at a daytime’s clear sky, I’m ‘‘attempting at’’ the sky in a post hoc way. The sky I see isn’t necessarily the sky, because I’m already late in the game, a guy looking out of a window at something blue, but maybe it has already changed. I don’t come to know the sky at all because of another issue, which is Einstein’s carefully worded ‘‘process of conceptualization.’’ He doesn’t say that science is conceptualization, only that some process using concepts allows us to reconstruct existence after the fact. Einstein’s ‘‘process’’ suggests that using concepts – and, by implication , reconstructing existence – doesn’t happen just once in a wash of success. Not at all. We conceptualize and rebuild over and over – and once it’s done, we do it again. Maybe Einstein’s definition applies to what we roundly call thinking as much as it pertains to science. I admit that looking at the sky is no act of science until a person stops, perhaps, to gaze at it more intently. All the above leads me without detour to pages 91–92 in the fourth chapter of What Kind of Creatures Are We? The chapter’s title is ‘‘The Mysteries of Nature: How Deeply Hidden?’’ (By the way, every chapter title is a question: ‘‘What Is Language?’’; ‘‘What Can We Understand?’’; ‘‘What Is the Common Good?’’; and chapter 4’s, which I find the best of the lot.) Chapter 4 reproduces, essentially verbatim, a Chomsky article in The Journal of Philosophy from 2009. We might pause to think, with disappointment, that we have mere republication in front of us, not a late-career synthe- 1 3 6 M I Y A W A K I Y sis. Still, ideas do matter, and maybe they bear much repeating – as well as duplication for the public in hardback at a modest price. My quibble notwithstanding, on page 91, Chomsky discusses Galileo’s...

Why only us? Language and evolution by Robert C. Berwick and Noam Chomsky

Reviewed by: Why only us? Language and evolution by Robert C. Berwick and Noam Chomsky Ljiljana Progovac Why only us? Language and evolution. By Robert C. Berwick and Noam Chomsky. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2016. Pp. 224. ISBN 9780262034241. $22.95 (Hb). 1. Chomsky’s Knot It is a good thing that we linguists are discussing language evolution, for without linguists’ input, this important question cannot be properly addressed. Likewise, ‘like other biological phenomena, language cannot be fully understood without reference to its evolution, whether proven or hypothesized’ (Givón 2002:39, emphasis added). In that sense, Berwick and Chomsky’s book is important; being written by scholars of such great stature, it sends a clear message that this topic is both timely and relevant for linguists. While there has been a slight (tacit) shift from some of their previous claims, my conclusion is that B&C’s proposal still keeps them and many other linguists tied in a knot, a knot that prevents them from developing new hypotheses and angles to be explored. This leaves ample room for the alternative approaches to language evolution, the ones that B&C dismiss. It is encouraging to see that B&C have softened, as least to some extent, their original stance on the emergence of language, as well as the vehemence of their criticism of opposing views. For example, while they do not acknowledge this, B&C have significantly shifted their estimated date of the emergence of language to up to 200,000 years ago (157), from the previous ‘just a bit over 50,000 years ago’ (Chomsky 2005). In this respect, they meet almost half way Dediu and Levinson’s (2013) estimate that language dates back to the common ancestor of humans and Neanderthals, to some 400,000–500,000 years ago (for sharp criticism of Dediu and Levinson’s claims, see e.g. Berwick et al. 2013). Not only that, but B&C no longer claim that Neanderthals did not have language. Instead, B&C now say that it is the ‘$64,000 question whether Neandertals [End Page 992] had language’ (50). This shift comes in the midst of a host of very recent findings in both archeology and genetics that point to a deeper timeline for the emergence of language. Such findings will continue to accrue and surprise us. In this short review, I can only address a few claims among many made by B&C. I see two main threads streaming into what I call chomsky’s knot (on analogy with B&C’s references to ‘Darwin’s problem’ or ‘Darwin’s troubles’). The first thread is their claim that the only serious way to approach the question of language and its evolution is to adopt the most recent theoretical postulates of Chomsky’s framework minimalism (in particular, the strong minimalist thesis), which reduces syntax to a single optimal operation Merge: ‘UG [universal grammar] must meet the condition of evolvability, and the more complex its character, the greater the burden on some future account’ of its evolution (93). The second thread is the claim that ‘we simply do not have as much to explain’ (11): given how simple syntax must be,1 the evolution of syntax/language amounted to just one single, unremarkable event. In other words, according to B&C, (i) in order for syntax to be evolvable, syntax itself has to be extremely simple, and (ii) given that syntax must be super simple (as per (i)), syntax must have arisen through one single, minor mutation. This proposal is circular and entangled. It has kept many researchers tied in a knot, since this reasoning makes unclear what remains to be learned either about syntax or about the evolution of syntax. 2. Does merge combine concepts? merge, move, perfection, and more B&C simply assume that there is in fact ‘the optimal situation’, contra appearances (of great complexity), and that ‘UG reduces to the simplest computational principles … This conjecture is sometimes called the Strong Minimalist Thesis (SMT)’ (94). The claim is that the ‘generative process is optimal’, based on ‘efficient computation’ (71), and that ‘this newly emerged computational system for thought … is perfect, in so...

The Propaganda Model and the Information Behavior of American and Arabic Media in Covering News Related to Middle Eastern Issues

This paper discusses the Propaganda Model which was firstintroduced in Edward S. Herman, and Noam Chomsky’sbook Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of theMass Media in 1988. According to that model, the media acts inthe interests of the corporate elite that fund it by applying thefilters necessary to encourage citizens to consent to theiragenda.This paper compares the use of mass media in twodifferent societies (USA mass media and the mass media of theArab world). It shows the effect of using the propaganda modelon the information behavior of the public in both societies. Itexplains the impact of mass media on the production ofinformation that would be used to shape public’s opinions in bothsocieties through applying the five filters of the propagandamodel on the dissemination of information (News) that is relatedto Middle Eastern issues and also the Iranian nuclear programissue, which indicates that the concept of the propaganda modeldidn’t change even with the freedom of expressing differentopinions through new sources of the media like the alternativemedia or what is called the independent media through theinternet.

Commentary: Desiccation and tone within linguistic theory and language contact research

The notion that there may be causal connections between the environment and language structure has long been in disrepute. In part, this is due to earlier connections to racist ideologies. And in part, this is due to the more recent Chomskyan tradition, which sees language as an autonomous and innate faculty. Within the domain of phonology, the general sentiment that there can be no causal relationship between the environment and language is nicely expressed by the following quote: There is no correlation whatever between […] any aspect of linguistic structure and the environment. Studying the structure of a language reveals absolutely nothing about either the people who speak it or the physical environment in which they live . (Kaye 1989: 48) This claim bristles with confidence, using phrases such as ‘absolutely nothing’ and ‘no correlation whatever’, making it clear that the author—like many other linguists—is convinced that environmental influences on language are not worth studying. We note that this statement (and its context) do not reference positive evidence for this conclusion, but rather express the absence of correlations as an established scientific statement. Has Kaye sieved through quantitative data of hundreds of languages to show that there is no correlation between the environment and linguistic structure? No, he did not. The quote is an expression of tradition, not an expression of fact. Everett et al. (2015) rightly point out that unquestioned beliefs about the absence of environmental influences are just as speculative as the racist ideas that were circulating within linguistics of the 19th and 20th century. Happily, tradition and force of rhetoric are becoming less constraining now. We are currently experiencing a ‘data gold rush’ within linguistics, what some have called ‘computational cognitive revolution’ in analogy to the ‘cognitive revolution’ ushered in by Noam Chomsky (Griffiths 2015). The …

Saussure and Chomsky. Langue and I-language

Ferdinand de Saussure and Noam Chomsky are considered to be the most influential linguists. In this paper, we contrast their accounts concerning the following issues of language and try to make clear differences between them, mainly referring to Saussure’s langue and Chomsky’s I-language: 1) How concepts emerge, 2) How phonemes appear, 3) How languages change, 4) Where syntax belongs to, 5) Whether language is social or biological, 6) What parts of speech are, and 7) Whether languages are delimited or not. By doing so, it will be understood that in what ways the two linguists have common or different ideas about language.

The Responsibilities of Privilege: an Interview with Noam Chomsky on the Role of the Public Intellectual

The Responsibilities of Privilege: an Interview with Noam Chomsky on the Role of the Public Intellectual

Noam Chomsky, Occupy/İşgal Et: Sınıf Savaşı, İsyan ve Baskı Üzerine Düşünceler (Occupy: Reflections on Class War, Rebellion and Repression)

Occupy/Isgal Et adli eser, Chomsky’nin cesitli yerlerde yaptigi konusmalar ve kendisiyle yapilan roportajlardan olusmaktadir. Genel olarak 2008 yilinda baslayan Occupy veya Turkcesiyle “Isgal Et” eylemi hakkinda hareketi destekleyen insanlarin neler yapabilecegi ile ilgili dusuncelerini icermektedir. Bu anlamda genelde insanin birey olarak yapabilecegi cok sey oldugunu bir seyler yapmak ici illa bir baskasina gerek olmadigini, herkesin uzerine duseni yapmasi gerektigini ifade etmektedir. Bunun icin Chomsky, “Engelleri ve gerilimleri asmak ve uzun sure dayanacak kararli, surekli, kalici bir hareketin parcasi olmak icin birlikte calismanin yollarini nasil bulabiliriz?” yani “Nasil bir araya gelebiliriz?” diye sorar. Belki de daha onemlisi ne yapabiliriz diye dusunmekten ziyade bir seyler yapmanin gerekliligini anlamayi saglamak istemektedir.

A study on Democratization of Newspaper Medium and its Political Bias

There are claims of media bias in both news and entertainment media. There are a variety of watchdog groups that attempt to find the facts behind both biased reporting and unfounded claims of bias, and research about media bias is a subject of systematic scholarship in a variety of disciplines. Before the rise of professional journalism in the early 1900s, and the conception of media ethics, newspapers reflected the opinions of the publisher. The advent of the Progressive Era, from the 1890s to the 1920s, was a period of relative reform with a particular journalistic style, while early in the period, some American newspapers engaged in yellow journalism to increase sales. William Randolph Hearst, publisher of several majormarket newspapers, for example, deliberately falsified stories of incidents, which may have contributed to the Spanish-American War. There are a number of criteria for determining the prominence of a news story in media outlets and the attention it is given by the audience. One example is that negative news is given higher value and more prominence than positive news. In modern all-news media, there is the necessity of generating enough news to fill the media 24/7, even when no news-worthy events occur. Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky in their book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988) proposed a propaganda model to explain the systematic biases of U.S. media as a consequence of the pressure to create a stable and profitable business. In this view, the regime creates five filters that bias news in favor of U.S. corporate interests. According to Noam Chomsky, American commercial media encourage controversy within a narrow range of opinion, in order to give the impression of open debate, but do not report on news that falls outside that range. Now, it has been a question even to Indian Newspaper Medium that how far it has been democratic in its presentation of news. All the newspapers whether having regional, state, national or even international news, they are politically biased. How much we are getting news in the daily newspapers other than politics? Why some of the newspapers have become the spokesperson of individual political parties? Why can’t the newspapers be independent? Then where lies the term and the myth ‘objectivity’ in different newspapers? Why we are getting the same news with different angles, presentation and representation in different newspapers? These are some of the objectives of this paper and the paper will try to analyze, discuss, criticize and assess the biasness of print media towards political issues having case studies and examples of some national dailies.