Chomsky's writing style is just...meh

[graffic]

Although I have respect for Noam Chomsky, I wouldn't say his books are "hard to put down".

I think the same about many other writers, obviously educating the working class is an important thing to do but I can't see the proletariat reading people like Chomsky. Perhaps we need another George Orwell,

What do you think about communicating with workers? I have big respect for intelligent people with a command of the English language (or any other language) and know how to communicate clearly. Ezra Pound said "Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree". Words that don’t contribute meaning to a passage dilute its power. Less is always better.

[Havet]

And the dumbest thing about emo kids is that...I...

You know, I'm sick of easy targets. Anyone can make fun of Emo kids. You know who's had it too easy? COMPUTATIONAL LINGUISTICS.

"Oh, look at me! My field is so ill-defined i can subscribe to any of dozens of contradictory models and still be taken seriously!"

Chomskyists, generative linguistics, and Ryan North, your days are numbered.

[jake williams]

I would rather read Chomsky than Orwell any fucking day. People call Chomsky dull and unreadable - Chomsky talks like a normal person. He's not verbose or floral, but he's clear and honest. Orwell is a weird mix of pretentious and underwhelming.

[ComradeMan]

I would rather read Chomsky than Orwell any fucking day. People call Chomsky dull and unreadable - Chomsky talks like a normal person. He's not verbose or floral, but he's clear and honest. Orwell is a weird mix of pretentious and underwhelming.


Well perhaps it was because Orwell was writing literature whereas Chomsky was writing socio-political critique or a theory of linguistics?

Isn't it a bit like comparing Wittgenstein with Homer?

[Agnapostate]

Perhaps best for the bored layperson are the transcripts of his speeches that have been recorded in numerous texts, if thing's he's written are boring and his actual speaking is also boring.

[IcarusAngel]

Chomsky draws tens of thousands of people to his speeches. Like with Russell, people voluntarily buy his books by the hundreds of thousands, even though he has no advertising and no major publishers (a major publisher operating under the Warner Bros label wanted to publish one of his books but it was rejected by the president). His books are by far the most published by Zmag and the American Empire Project.

In contract, an Orwell speech would have probably drawn a few hundred English majors and most people read his books because they are forced to in high school.

His work has also been influential for major change, such as in Latin America and esp. East Timor etc.

As for boring, the topics themselves are kind of boring depending on who you are. I've actually found Chomsky to be the most straightforward anarchist there is and it's really a blessing he's there as he doesn't describe to a lot of the nonsense that many anarchists do (such as primativism or anti-scientific beliefs) and at the same time rejects tyrannical anarchism such as anarchism based around capitalism and free-markets:

"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."[76] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/#cite_note-75) "We don't want to be swayed by superficial eloquence, by emotion and so on.

Chomsky questions its use:

f I want to understand, let's say, the nature of China and its revolution, I ought to be cautious about literary renditions. Look, there's no question that as a child, when I read about China, this influenced my attitudes ­ Rickshaw Boy, for example. That had a powerful effect when I read it. It was so long ago I don't remember a thing about it, except the impact. . . . Literature can heighten your imagination and insight and understanding, but it surely doesn't provide the evidence that you need to draw conclusions and substantiate conclusions. ([I]Chomsky Reader 4)


He is right, in my opinion. You need a good foundation of the issues and of certain principles to understand politics.

For example, to understand many enlightenment thinkers, you have to understand that many of them had as an ultimate goal equality and egalitarianism, which is left out by many right-Libertarian analyses. They also generally opposed the oppressive situations that occur under capitalism. If chomsky points out something like this, he usually gives plenty of evidence that it's true. This is because people generally will question unconvential beliefs, necessitating long-winded replies.

People will gravitate to what they're interested in. It should be easy to get people interested in politics, then they can read Chomsky. Eventually, in any subject you're studying, mathematics or political science, you have to read works that are dry. The claim that workers would be "too bored to understand it [the subject]" is an insult to the intelligence of workers.

[IcarusAngel]

In short working people love Chomsky. When it came time to vote for the world's favorite public intellectual, Chomsky easily won. Ironically most people are put off by the kind of leftism advocated by Chomsky's leftist critics.



"Oh, look at me! My field is so ill-defined i can subscribe to any of dozens of contradictory models and still be taken seriously!"

Chomskyists, generative linguistics, and Ryan North, your days are numbered.

Lol. Linguistics has moved well beyond its classificatory stage and is now a study of advanced language, which is natural and about nature. Theories can indeed be proven wrong with empirical evidence from the real world, which is why it is closer to a science.

It is not like economics where it is a study of human constructed systems and thus full of contradictions. It has many "branches" (such as computational linguistics) in the same way that physics has theoretical physics and computational physics.

Likewise unlike economics physics has had many applications in science and draws from many other sciencies.

Chomsky would be the "Einstein" in Linguistics, or Galileo, for setting the foundations up. He's not a computational linguist.

[Havet]

Lol. Linguistics has moved well beyond its classificatory stage and is now a study of advanced language, which is natural and about nature. Theories can indeed be proven wrong with empirical evidence from the real world, which is why it is closer to a science.

It is not like economics where it is a study of human constructed systems and thus full of contradictions. It has many "branches" (such as computational linguistics) in the same way that physics has theoretical physics and computational physics.

Likewise unlike economics physics has had many applications in science and draws from many other sciencies.

Chomsky would be the "Einstein" in Linguistics, or Galileo, for setting the foundations up. He's not a computational linguist.

Lol i was only joking around. I took the joke from xkcd actually.

[IcarusAngel]

Well it's hard to tell sometimes. I know many Libertarians are anti-science and especially anti-social science and mathematical reasoning.

[ComradeMan]

Chomsky would be the "Einstein" in Linguistics, or Galileo, for setting the foundations up. He's not a computational linguist.

... and just like Einstein he is open to debate and criticism, hell, even Einstein ripped up some of his own theories- recently they just discovered with dark energy that a theory Einstein scrapped himself may actually be correct!!!

Although I think Chomsky is open to debate he is by far the best we have as of yet for modern linguistic theory- unless a small South American tribe without numbers derail the whole theory group! ;)

[narcomprom]

the polemics are bit too aggressive for my taste, but that applies to all left american authors. what sounds like a plattitude to the euro might have life-shattering effect on an audience fed by fox news.

[Drace]

I tried reading Hegemony or Survival. I couldn't comprehend anyhting.

Ironic for a guy who studies linguistics.

[ComradeMan]

Narcomprom makes a very good point. I have read a lot of Chomsky's works and they don't sound too radical at all, given that half of America thinks that poor old Obama is an evil communist it makes me wonder they haven't tarred and feathered Chomsky! :D

As for Chomsky's works being incomprehensible- ironic indeed for I believe it was Chomsky was it not who criticised the Parisian and/or European intellegentsia for dressing up everything in fancy and difficult language and thus accused them of being intellectual elitists? I may be wrong in this assertion so please point out if I am. :)

[graffic]

I would rather read Chomsky than Orwell any fucking day. People call Chomsky dull and unreadable - Chomsky talks like a normal person. He's not verbose or floral, but he's clear and honest. Orwell is a weird mix of pretentious and underwhelming.

I like Chomsky's honesty, he is not pretentious in any way. I wouldn't say he talks like a normal person though. Although substance is more important than delivery, and although he is a linguist, he doesn't seem to value writing style. It takes skill to communicate something complex in a clear and convincing way. For example, tabloid newspapers are much more popular than broadsheets. Most of the papers have one or two pages of political news, written in 40 word paragraphs, and more people read them. And the journalists get paid a lot more