Criticizing Chomsky

[Leila Monaghan]

Oh the joys of Wikipedia.  Despite the asking for more information, turns
out there is a full page of Chomsky critiques, (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Noam_Chomsky) mostly of his
political views.  That page still needs some ling anth voices though and
definitely needs some cleaning up.

all best,

Leila



On Mon, Oct 13, 2008 at 3:04 PM, Leila Monaghan <leila.monaghan at gmail.com>wrote:

> Scanning the web for Chomsky's views on science (I'm being a good girl and
> trying to work on our panel at the AAAs now rather than later), I came
> across his Wikipedia page.  There was a section for criticism but no one had
> actually filled it in.  The paragraph below is the start of my critique
> (ripped off from my intro) but y'all are invited to play.  Unleash that
> articulate pent up rage against the Chomsky machine!  I haven't put in any
> refs yet.  Will try to when I get to them in my intro.
>
> All best, Leila
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky#Criticism
> Since the 1960s, linguistic anthropologists have been critical of Chomsky's
> emphasis on competence rather than performance. In 1972, Dell Hymes pointed
> out that Noam Chomsky's (1965) idea that linguistic theory should the "ideal
> speaker-listener, in a completely homogenous speech community" ignored the
> reality of the actual language learning situations. "From the standpoint of
> the children we seek to understand and help, such a statement may seem
> almost a complete declaration of irrelevance" (Hymes 1972 [2001]: 53). Hymes
> and other linguistic anthropologists argue instead for language models that
> emphasize the interaction between sociocultural environment and the use of
> language rather than language as an attribute of the brain.
>
>
>