![]() Noam Chomsky in 1976 Image: imago/ZUMA/Keystone "For years, every time I came to Washington, the first thought that came to mind was the smell of teargas, I was in and out of demonstrations, in and out of jail a number of times," he said, adding that he went to jail in 1967 alongside the writer Norman Mailer. Inspired by anarchist and socialist writers like George Orwell, in the 1960s Chomsky became involved in the anti-Vietnam War movement, not only as an intellectual critic, but as a participant in direct "activism and resistance," as he called it in a 2003 interview. Read more: Noam Chomsky: "Saving the commons from the wrecking ball of commercial destruction" Having since been dubbed "the father of modern linguistics," the long-time Institute Professor Emeritus at MIT and author of 100-odd books further made his name for his deconstruction of language in the public realm, and the way words have helped wage war and consolidate political power. ![]() ![]() It wasn't long, however, before the young unknown scholar single-handedly revolutionized the field of linguists, his book Syntactic Structures (1957) kickstarting his concept of "transformational grammar" that argued - contrary to the behaviorist fad of the time - that our linguistic capacity is genetic and innate. Though his father was a Hebrew scholar who studied medieval grammar, Chomsky lacked direction through school and university and only committed to the study of linguistics when he took up a post at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1955. Born on December 7, 1928, Noam Chomsky was raised by Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants in Philadelphia. ![]()
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