Language and Politics

by Noam Chomsky

Book Overview

A series of previously unpublished interviews, spanning the twenty year period from 1968 to 1988, that looks at the connection between Chomsky's linguistic studies and his political analysis. Prepared for Chomsky in celebration of his sixtieth birthday. "This wide-ranging book offers glimpses of his studies on language, anarchist theory and critiques of radical politics."-- NACLA Report on the Americas

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0921689349
• ISBN13: 9780921689348
• Release Date: January 1988
• Publisher: Black Rose Books
• Length: 779 Pages
• Weight: 1.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.5" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

My Favorite Chomsky Book

This is my favorite Chomsky book. Starting in the mid-80s, I found his writing to be less and less readable, but his talks and interviews more and more fascinating. This is a collection of those interviews, and it's really tremendous. Yes, there is some repetition and overlap, but on the whole it's very informative about the thinking of one the greatest men of our times.

know what you're getting into

Full disclosure: I'm only about halfway through this book. But I thought I'd give my opinions anyway and update them if I change my mind. This is a fascinating book in many respects. The introduction is fascinating, and there is a lot of scholarly apparatus (good introductions and contextualizations of every interview: where it appeared, what context it appeared in, and also some bibliography for the authors and ideas raised within.) That said, I agree there is a lot of overlap between interviews. That's not necessarily a bad thing: some of these issues are very complex and it's great to see them approached repeatedly from different angles. The most problematic aspect of this book is the way in which political questions and discussions of Chomsky's linguistic work are merged together. A very very common question in the interviews is "Dr. Chomsky, do you see any relation between your work in linguistics and your political activism." The answers range from "No" to "In a very vague and general sense maybe possibly yes, but I don't think it's a vital relationship and you would better spend your time asking different kinds of questions about each." This comes up over and over again. To that end, I wish these interviews had been separated thematically as well as chronologically (or even split into two separate books.) Chomsky is an amazing popularizer of his own work in linguistics and makes some very profound points about the relationship between his work and general currents in philosophy and philosophy of science. But it's a little annoying to start each interview and not know what is going to be covered: are we going to talk about Vietnam or are we going to talk about transformational grammar and innate language capacity? I've enjoyed this book very much so far (I've learned more about Chomsky's views on language than I have about his political ideas, but maybe that will change with later interviews.) If you want a concentrated focus on one or the other half of Chomsky's work, however, be prepared to skip material.

In-depth with one of our greatest thinkers

This collection is an impressive gathering of interviews collected from the early sixties to the present. In it, the Professor gives some of his best long-range insights on a number of topics, such as linguistics, philosophy, science, politics, the Middle East, the media, and education. This volume is not the place to start if you are new to Chomsky's work, but it is an excellent supplement to his famous writings. As to the interviews themselves, they are mostly fascinating, Chomsky proves once again that he may be the most important intellectual of the latter half of the 20th century. My one complaint is that some of the interviews overlap, as he is asked to speak multiple times on a number of topics, he is asked what the conncection between his linguistic work and his political work is about twenty times for instance, as the title would suggest. Aside from that, this is an invaluable read.