Comment by breppp
2 days ago
and neither would Chomsky be interviewed by the BBC for his linguistic theory, if he hadn't held these edgy opinions
2 days ago
and neither would Chomsky be interviewed by the BBC for his linguistic theory, if he hadn't held these edgy opinions
What do you mean by "edgy opinions"? His takedown of Skinner, or perhaps that he for a while refused to pay taxes as a protest against war?
I'm not sure of the timeline but I'd guess he got to start the linguistics department at MIT because he was already The Linguist in english and computational/mathematical linguistics methodology. That position alone makes it reasonable to bring him to the BBC to talk about language.
Chomsky has always taken the anti-American side on any conflict America has been involved in. That is why he's "edgy". He's an American living in America always blaming America for everything.
I mean, its because for the last 80 years America has been the belligerent aggressive party in every conflict. Are you going to bat for Iraq? Vietnam? Korea?
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Isn't that a popular, trendy way to think/act now in the US?
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chomsky is invented not just for linguistic. Simply because linguistic doesn't interest the wider audience that much. That seems pretty trivial.
Chomsky published his political analyses in parallel with and as early as his career as the most influential and important general linguist of the 20th Century, but they caught on much later than his work in linguistics. He was already a famous syntactician when he got on people's radar for his political views, and he was frequently interviewed as a linguist for his views on how general language facilities are built into our brain long before he was interviewed on politics.
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The BBC will have multiple people with differing view points on however.
So while you're factually correct, you lie by omission.
Their attempts at presently a balanced view is almost to the point of absurdity these days as they were accused so often, and usually quite falsely, of bias.
I said BBC because as the other poster added, this was a BBC reporter rather than Carlson
Chomsky's entire argument is, that the reporter opinions are meaningless as he is part of some imaginary establishment and therefore he had to think that way.
That game goes both ways, Chomsky's opinions are only being given TV time as they are unusual.
I would venture more and say the only reason Chomsky holds these opinions is because of the academics preference for original thought rather than mainstream thought. As any repeat of an existing theory is worthless.
The problem is that in the social sciences that are not grounded in experiments, too much ungrounded original thought leads to academic conspiracy theories
Imaginary establishment? Do you think power doesn't exist?
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How often does the BBC have a communist on? Almost never?
I'm genuinely struggling to think of many people in modern politics who identify as communists who would qualify for this, but certainly Ash 'literally a communist' Sarkar is a fairly regular guest on various shows: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002dlj3
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>>The BBC will have multiple people with differing view points on however.
Not for climate change, as that debate is "settled". Where they do need to pretend to show balance they will pick the most reasonable talking head for their preferred position, and the most unhinged or extreme for the contra-position.
>> they were accused so often, and usually quite falsely, of bias.
Yes, really hard to determine the BBC house position on Brexit, mass immigration, the Iraq War, Israel/Palestine, Trump etc