It was only yesterday that I learned that Noam Chomsky is a linguist and that he works at MIT.
I first heard of Chomsky when I was about 20. In all the time that I have known of him, I thought he was a political theorist and commentator with a think tank organization. The only reason for me thinking this is connected to a vague memory of either a play on words or commentary on the book title and film “Manufacturing consent” in the student newspaper at the University of Waterloo. I also remember seeing the book in the library of the Waterloo Public Interest Research Group. I guess I thought if the key activist camps on my university campus are into this guy, Chomsky must be some sort of activist himself. I also thought for a period of time that he was Canadian and a contemporary of Marshall McLuhan. Clearly, I didn’t bother exploring Chomsky with any depth, until yesterday.
I’ll satisfy my ego by saying I am correct that he is an activist, and I guess think tank and MIT aren’t too far off, but I completely underestimated how much more there is to him. I can only attribute to not “discovering” him sooner because I wasn’t ready and not in the right place in my life to grasp his theories and commentaries, and more importantly, appreciate them.
Now, I am just blown away and SO EXCITED to make his acquaintenace, beginning in the pages of Grammar for Grammarians (published by Parlay Press), the text for my Structure of Modern English class.
I do concede, I feel foolish and somewhat inadequate for not knowing more and reading more about Chomsky sooner. I’m no intellectual snob (yet… I am an admitted food snob, however) so I never felt the need to be so well-read in philosophy, psychology, political discourse etc. that I could say, oh yes I’ve read Kant, Descartes and Isosceles Triangle, for the purposes of sounding intellectual and well-read.
As I read more about Chomsky’s theories this morning on the El, I did momentarily feel short-changed when I realized that I could have spent my early 20s learning about his generative grammar theory instead of taking organic chemistry, twice, because I failed it the first time, and couldn’t drop my ill-formed goal to complete a minor in chemistry (and gosh darn it, I did get that minor and can’t say I’ve used any organic, analytical or environmental chemistry since). But feeling short-changed was short-lived because in choosing to continue to pursue my education by starting a masters degree I opened myself up to the possibility of learning something new. Enter Chomsky.
The best part of discovering Chomsky in the past 24 hours is that my small, quiet recent wondering of “would I get to live in the same era as someone I consider a genius?” has been answered so quickly.
Chomsky is almost 77 so my time slotting him under living hero status is likely short. I’m already keeping an eye open for any speaking engagements I can attend and perhaps a Google Alert on him is in order, so I can catch his most recent ramblings and others’s ramblings on Chomsky.
* I say, “also,” because although I have used “the universe exploding in my head on several occaisions,” the person I would describe as the chief cause of explosions in my head is Albert Einstein. I don’t pretend to understand the depth of all his scientific theories, but by god, he will always rock my universe because being able to say I have the same birthday as Albert Einstein ROCKS and continually reminds me I have a lot of work to do if I want to accomplish half of what he did in his lifetime.
