Customer Reviews

Introducing Chomsky, 2nd Edition

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As a avid reader of books on evolutionary psychology and sociobiology, and a foreign language graduate, I thought I would be able to cope with the degree of difficulty of this "Introduction". In fact, I gave up trying one third into the book. Not only are the technical terms not defined, but any attempt to derive their meaning or establish relationships between concepts failed.Much of the argument is enigmatic rather than explanatory. Many utterances seem to be drawn out of context.

At least as an introduction to a difficult subject, there's nothing for it but to regard this book as a failure.

It's not accurate to title this book "Introducing Chomsky." I was able to follow it, but I spent six years in a graduate program in linguistics.... The book is mildly entertaining, even if it is disgustingly fawning, but I could not recommend it to a non-linguist who wanted an introduction to Chomsky's thought. There's simply too much use of technical terms without defining them, mixing of difficult technical concepts, etc.

Introducing Chomsky is divided into two sections:

a) First 122 pages: concerned with his theories of linguistics. Utterly fails to make it understandable for begginers. I found myself drowning in a subject I didn't particularly want to read about anyway (I bought this for the second section, which is:)

b) Last 70 or so pages: concerned with Chomsky's social critique. Extremely interesting, worthwhile read and a good introduction for begginers. Even this opens our eyes to a lot of truths and should push any reader who can get past the dreary linguistics section on to Chomsky's own works on government, propaganda and politics.

I bought this book at the book store which didn't have any of Chomskys political books (I wonder why). All there was was this one which had some of Chomskys ideas. The majority of the content in this book is about linguistics. To tell the truth, I didn't really know what linguistics was until I got this book. I agree with the other reviewer who said that this book didn't explain all the technical terms too well, or at all. I finished this book with hardly anything learned about linguistics. The Social Critic section didn't define too many terms either, but I already knew most of it so it was ok. Next time I'll buy a real Chomsky book because I like his essays that I find online, but this book wasn't so great, but then again, it also wasn't written by him.

I have always been interested in these "introducing" books. at first, I just thought that they were for old philosophers and psychologists. I had always wondered if there would be one of these books with chomsky... then I found it! i couldn't wait to read it. what a fool I was. for almost the entire book, its about chomsky on linguistics which, by the way, MADE NO SENSE AT ALL!!!!! it was just so confusing, which was the whole point of making an introduction in the first place! then when thats FINALLY over they suposedly "go over his political views" which is HAVE AS LONG AS THE OTHER PART!!! it only 46 PAGES!!! and it still doesn't explain anything! oh well, at least theres "chomsky for beginners" they do the same thing as the "introducing" series but I've looked over this one and it does look A LOT better. the back of the cover explained more than this entire book!!!

This is a good introduction for beginners. It is not however a dumbed-down version with pictures used to replace useful textÑalthough I found the repetition of certain pictures (ones of Chomsky and the author...) a little tedious, it starts you down the road with the basics of linguistics so you can understand how his expertise affects his political views on media and government. It started me off right as an individual looking for some more information about the man and his work. This whole series seems like it would be great in a middle or high school classroom for a teacher who wants to open her students' eyes to alternative perspectives on media, language, and politics.