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Study Chinese – Critic, linguistics expert Chomsky finding new contours at 82 – Chinese Culture
By chinesecourse | August 16, 2010
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| Noam Chomsky (Photo: Global Times) |
BEIJING, Aug. 16 (Xinhuanet) — In his first visit to the Chinese mainland, Noam Chomsky, the 82-year-old world renowned intellectual, father of modern linguistics and perhaps the most famous critic of American foreign policy and mainstream media, warned his listeners at Peking University of the dangers of environmental and nuclear catastrophes.
Chomsky appeared in Beijing as the keynote speaker for GLOW in Asia VIII, a forum held by the Generative Linguistics in the Old World (Asia) at the Beijing Foreign Language and Culture University from August 12 to 15.
“There are two major threats of the lives and death of the humankind,” Chomsky said in his August 13 lecture, Contours of the world: continuities and changes. “One is the environmental catastrophe, the other is the threat of nuclear power.”
Chomsky pointed out that China had seen spectacular development following the reform and opening up in 1978; however, the problems of environmental pollution as well as huge social inequalities need to be addressed.
Wearing a blue shirt and silver tie, white haired Chomsky spoke tenderly, as laughter and applause rang out more than a dozen times.
“Professor Chomsky’s visit is not only a big event for linguistics and cognition science, but also notable for the whole Chinese academic world,” said Huang Zhengde, the organizer, who was also a student of Chomsky and a linguistics professor at Harvard University.
In 1957, Chomsky’s post-doctoral thesis “Sentence Structure” laid the foundation of modern linguistics in establishing a “biolinguistic” approach to language studies.
This new way of looking at linguistics also set new directions of research in psychology, philosophy, semantics, education and artificial intelligence.
However, it was not until he expressed his opposition toward the Vietnam War in 1967 that he became internationally known.
Called “the forever dissident,” Chomsky made a bigger public name for himself as a relentless critic of US foreign policy, media and educational systems.
A moment of truth came when an audience member asked what the contour of his life was after years of fighting and facing controversy.
“A part of my contour is trying to do something about the suffering and desperate fate of a huge number of people and, by now, the entire species. The other part is scientific research, such as linguistics, philosophy and cognitive science,” he said. “Although times change, commitments remain.”
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