If you like essays written and dedicated to the dismantling of the author’s critics, grab the popcorn. The guy lays into people who disagree with him in a really funny way. He’s careful to unpick their ideas before he corrects them on their misunderstandings and finally kicks them with a little snide comment about how they lack the capacity to understand and form competent ideas.
Burn.
Seriously though, more than anything else this book opens out the idea of language and reveals it to be the most mysterious, complex and fascinating invention in human history. It is amazing! It doesn’t make sense. Language, I mean. We seem to have discovered it, more than it being an invention really. There are so many layers to it.
The way I look at language now, I think that it is a way of communicating ideas that actually alters our minds as we use it. So we are in a state of symbiosis. Just like the internet has shortened our attention spans and now, rather than learning and knowing information, our brains merely learn the location of information so we can find it again if we need it. Ultimately resulting in a culture that passively consumes media, rather than engaging with it. Leading to people liking awful millennial fiction that leaves you with a fuzzy warm feeling of comfort and doesn’t challenge you or make you grow.
Chomsky would agree. He’s a guy who passionately loves language. For him, it is meant to be used as a tool to convey ideas and to be used creatively. He isn’t the sort of guy who reads, watches or listens to anything unless it is going to enhance his existence.
He is a man after my own heart.
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Comments