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English commentators Eddie Hemmings and Mike Stephenson at Parramatta Stadium during the 2008 Rugby League World Cup.

In sports broadcasting, a commentator gives a running commentary of a game or event in real time, usually during a live broadcast. The comments are normally a voiceover, with the sounds of the action and spectators also heard in the background. In the case of television commentary, the commentator is on screen rarely if at all. In North American English, other general terms for a commentator are announcer and sportscaster. ("Sportscaster" may also refer to a newscaster covering sports news.) In British broadcasting, the presenter of a sports broadcast is usually distinct from the commentator, and often based in a remote broadcast television studio away from the sports venue. Often, the main commentator (called a play-by-play in North America) is assisted by a color commentator, and sometimes a sideline reporter. In case of big events, teams consisting of many sideline reporters are placed strategically so that the color commentator has many sources to turn to, for example some sideline reporters could be in the dressing room area while others could be between the respective team benches.

Types of sports broadcasters[link]

Play-by-play announcers are the primary speakers, valued for their articulateness and ability to describe the events of an often fast-moving contest. Color commentators are valued for experience and insight into the game, and are often asked questions by the play-by-play announcer to give them a topic for analysis. The latter most often have gained their experience in the sport as a player and/or coach, while the former is more likely to be a professional broadcast journalist than a participant in the sport, although there are numerous exceptions to these general trends.

The most common format for a sports television broadcast is to have one of each type. An example is NBC Sunday Night Football in the United States, which is called by Cris Collinsworth, a former American football receiver, and Al Michaels, a professional announcer. In the United Kingdom however there is a much less distinct division between play-by-play and color commentary, although two-man commentary teams usually feature an enthusiast with formal journalistic training but little or no competitive experience leading the commentary, and an expert former (or current) competitor following up with analysis or summary. There are however exceptions to this - all of the United Kingdom's major cricket and snooker commentators are former professionals in their sports, while the legendary Formula One racing commentator Murray Walker had no formal journalistic training and only limited racing experience of his own.

Another difference between the two types is that color commentators will almost always announce only a sport in which they played or coached, while play-by-play announcers, such as Michaels and David Coleman in the UK, may have careers in which they call several different sports at one time or another. However, Brad Daugherty, a former professional basketball player, currently appears on coverage of NASCAR auto racing on ESPN.

Although the combination of a play-by-play announcer and one or more color commentators is standard today, in the past it was much more common for a play-by-play announcer to work alone. Vin Scully, longtime announcer for the Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team, is one of few examples of this practice still existing today.

United States[link]

While there were sports broadcasts from 1912, the first sports commentary was broadcast in April 1921 by Florent Gibson of the Pittsburg Star newspaper covering the fight between Johnny Ray and Johnny "Hutch" Dundee at the Motor Square Garden, Pittsburgh.^[1]

In the United States, nearly all professional sports teams, most collegiate teams—as well as a dwindling number of high schools have their own Sports commentators, who are usually recognized as the voice of the team on radio broadcasts and are often identified as part of the team like the players or the coaches. In addition, television networks and cable channels will have their own stable of play-by-play announcers that work with various teams.

See also[link]

Look up sportscaster in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• List of sports announcers
• List of Major League Baseball retired numbers#Broadcasters

References[link]

External links[link]

• Sportcaster Chronicles - Internet radio show in which John Lewis interviews leading American sports announcers.

Alan Gordon Partridge OBE (Honour Removed) is a fictional radio and television presenter portrayed by English comedian Steve Coogan and invented by Coogan, Armando Iannucci, Stewart Lee and Richard Herring for the BBC Radio 4 programme On The Hour. A parody of both sports commentators and chat show presenters, among others, the character has appeared in two radio series, three television series and numerous TV and radio specials, including appearances on BBC's Comic Relief, which have followed the rise and fall of his career.

Character[link]

This section relies on references to primary sources or sources affiliated with the subject, rather than references from independent authors and third-party publications. Please add citations from reliable sources. (April 2009)

Whereas many of his personality defects are apparent in his appearances in shows such as The Day Today and Knowing Me, Knowing You with Alan Partridge, it is largely from I'm Alan Partridge onwards that his creators began to explore his personality in depth, and most of the observations that follow originated in that show.

Personality[link]

Partridge is characterised as an insecure, superficial and narcissistic 'wally', concerned largely with status, the level of his public profile and, to a lesser extent, the ostentatious possessions this allows him to acquire (such as his beloved Rover and Lexus cars and Bang & Olufsen stereo systems). Despite being a broadcaster, Partridge is a socially incompetent and awkward character prone to one-upmanship, embarrassing social faux pas and displays of deep insensitivity to social norms. His thoughtlessness and selfish lack of interest in anything beyond his own objectives exposes an unsympathetic character that is disliked and privately lampooned by many of those with whom he comes into contact. Among Partridge's few friends are Lynn Benfield, his put-upon and long-suffering personal assistant whom he regularly humiliates, and Michael, an emotionally tortured ex-soldier from Newcastle upon Tyne. It is notable, however, that he treats even these people with little more than disdain despite expecting complete loyalty from them in return; in the first series of I'm Alan Partridge he does not even seem to be on first-name terms with Michael (who exclusively addressed him as Mr Partridge throughout the two series). Bizarrely, he appears to have a close friendship with Bill Oddie, who even sends Alan Christmas presents. Partridge is otherwise depicted as being unable to forge genuine friendships or connections with other people (who are, seemingly without exception, repelled by his unpleasant and self-absorbed personality).

Attraction[link]

Partridge is depicted as being a sexually repressed and prudish man, uncomfortable and awkward with overt (or even subtle) displays of sexual or romantic feelings, or what he views as being ‘perverted’ sexual practices. He is particularly disconcerted by homosexuality, and despite describing himself as "homosceptic" at one point appears to entertain homoerotic or bisexual tendencies. This is the subject of numerous running gags in I’m Alan Partridge, in particular his numerous efforts to deny his interest in Bangkok "lady-boys" (whom he describes as ‘fascinating creatures’ whilst insisting that he is merely confused by them and not attracted to them) and a recurrent gag in which he will daydream about performing an erotic dance in a peephole Pringle jumper and a vulcanised rubber thong for a selection of men (usually those who can help further his career in some way, such as BBC Chief of Programming Tony Hayers). He is also quite misogynistic, displaying a tendency to objectify and patronise women (who usually view him with some disdain). Despite this, in the second series of I’m Alan Partridge he manages to sustain a romantic relationship with Sonja, a scatterbrained 33-year-old immigrant from Ukraine who is quite devoted to him. Even this relationship, however, is marked by Alan’s open contempt for her, and it is apparent that her affection towards him is largely unreturned and that his relationship with her is mainly based on the boost to his ego that their 14-year age gap provides (which he is frequently heard boasting about).

Family[link]

No member of Partridge’s family is shown on any of the series that he appears in; however, his dysfunctional relationship with them informs much of the background of the show. In his early appearances, Alan was married to Carol; although never-seen on screen, she can be heard in the mock documentary 'Knowing Knowing Me, Knowing You' that accompanies the BBC Radio 4 series of 'Knowing Me, Knowing You' first broadcast in 1993. Their relationship appeared to be under a lot of strain. In the Christmas special Knowing Me, Knowing Yule, Alan attributed his rash and erratic behaviour to the fact that Carol had left him on Christmas Eve. By the time of I'm Alan Partridge, Alan and Carol are divorced, and while Alan lives in a Travel Tavern, Carol remains in their home with her new boyfriend, who Alan describes unflatteringly as "a narcissistic sports pimp" who apparently enjoys protein drinks. During their marriage, Alan and Carol had two children — Fernando (apparently named after the song by ABBA) and Denise — neither of whom is ever seen or heard on-screen. During the run of Knowing Me, Knowing You, Alan states that Fernando is studying Politics at Christ's College, Cambridge. The next references to Alan's children are made in I'm Alan Partridge, in which Fernando hangs up on one of Alan's rambling go-nowhere telephone conversations, and in which a staff member at the Travel Tavern mentions that Denise has an oddly similar appearance to Alan. It is also revealed that Denise has a pierced navel, and that Fernando seems to spend much of his time in bed with a succession of girlfriends. The final mention of Alan's children is an offhand comment in the second episode of the second series of I'm Alan Partridge, in which Alan glibly states that he has access to his children, but that they have no desire to see him.

Ambitions[link]

Outside of his all-consuming quest to be on television, his various appearances often demonstrate that Partridge does not possess a particularly rich or detailed personal life. In I’m Alan Partridge in particular, he is often shown to occupy himself with pointless or needless tasks, seemingly just to give himself something to do. This is particularly evident in the first series episode "Basic Alan", over the course of which he walks to a petrol station to buy 12 bottles of windscreen washer fluid for no apparent reason, spends time driving repeatedly around a ring road and purchases a packet of tungsten-tipped screws which he states he has no intention of ever using. Most of the interests he is depicted as having show him as out of touch with modern society in general; he describes Paul McCartney's band Wings as "the band The Beatles could have been". In "Towering Alan" he claims to have a broad taste in music; he is a fan of Kate Bush, the Electric Light Orchestra, UB40, Def Leppard and particularly ABBA, the music of which is a recurrent theme in Knowing Me, Knowing You. In the second series episode "I Know What Alan Did Last Summer" he enthusiastically plays "air-bass" to the Gary Numan song "Music for Chameleons", and in "Never Say Alan Again" is seen drumming along inside his Lexus to the theme of Return of the Saint which he plays at full volume insensitively at the cemetery whilst having given his assistant Lynn ten minutes to commemorate the anniversary of her mother's passing. The few hobbies he is depicted as indulging in include driving, rambling, birdwatching and collecting celebrity memorabilia.

Political views[link]

Partridge is politically conservative, and his favourite newspaper is the Daily Mail, a right-leaning publication which he claims is "arguably the best newspaper in the world" in the episode Bravealan. He is very pro-law and has a strong stance on criminality, viewing hoodlums and miscreants as "sub-human scum". He also favours the death penalty for treason and murder. Despite these professed views, he appears to have no strong moral compunctions; in one episode he exploits an "all you can fit on a plate" breakfast deal at the Travel Tavern by bringing in a slightly larger plate of his own, a "scam" of which the staff are in fact fully aware but tolerate with amusement. Alan is not a fan of the modern obsession with health and safety, stating on one occasion that political correctness had "gone mad" after being told that naked flames are not permitted on the forecourt of his local petrol station, thus curtailing his plans for a barbecue there. He has admiration for former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and believes she was betrayed by her own party when she was forced out of Downing Street, and in 1997 claimed that the Referendum Party had "more integrity than the whole of the other political parties put together."^[1]

He has commented on the troubles in Northern Ireland stating that he believes both Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness to be very clever men, though that he does not trust either of them as he believes Adams looks like a deputy headmaster and McGuinness looks like a clown without make-up. He displays ignorance over the issues that unfolded in Ireland, once chastising the Irish over the potato famine with the remark, "at the end of the day, they will pay the price for being a fussy eater", and also completely misunderstanding the lyrics to Sunday Bloody Sunday by U2, believing the song to "really encasuplated the frustrations of a Sunday" (both of these conversations happened in front of two Irish television producers in To Kill A Mocking Alan). Alan once caused a security alert at Choristers Country Club by booking a room under the name "The Real IRA".

Fictional biography[link]

Early years and career[link]

Within his fictional world, Partridge was born to Dorothy Partridge on 2 April 1955 in King's Lynn, Norfolk, England, and spent his childhood in Norwich. He was often bullied at school, as we find out in an episode of the original Knowing Me, Knowing You... with Alan Partridge radio show when Alan is hypnotised and regressed to his childhood, and reveals he was called "Smelly Alan Fartridge" by classmate Stephen McCoombs - happily for Partridge now McCoombs has back problems and lives on disability benefits. He claims in his autobiography that this was infantile humour that any self-respecting comedian would have dismissed and that he was particularly sensitive to hygiene issues and if there were anything he did smell of, it would have been Radox and Colgate. In the second series of I'm Alan Partridge, Alan recounts a story about a time he was once caned for having a chalk penis drawn on the back of his school blazer by another student, an incident about which he still feels bitter. The same student also dropped Alan's swimming trunks into a urinal one day at school, despite Alan being his scout pack leader. He appears to have had a lonely childhood, and in a 'Rural Alan' special feature (found on the DVD release of Knowing Me Knowing You with Alan Partridge) recounts how he would ramble about the Norfolk countryside in solitude, singing his favourite pop songs.

After passing two A-levels Partridge attended the (fictional) East Anglia Polytechnic. He later married Carol, who gave birth to Alan's son Fernando and daughter Denise. Carol left Alan for a fitness instructor (whom Alan claims to be an "idiot" and a "narcissistic sports pimp"), and took the children with her.

Radio career[link]

Alan worked his way upwards from a position as a DJ on Radio Smile on St Luke's hospital radio, until he left, after arguments with patients. He then began presenting the drive time Traffic Buster show on Radio Norwich, where he stayed for five years and was named sports reporter of the year in 1988. He then became a presenter on the BBC's Scoutabout programme, where he entered into the top eight of BBC sports reporters. Alan soon garnered a slot presenting sports news on BBC Radio 4's On the Hour programme (1991) presented by Chris Morris. On that show Alan suffered from a severe lack of any sporting knowledge and developed a notable talent for mixed and/or nonsensical metaphors.

Alan got his first starring role in 1992 as host of BBC Radio 4's Knowing Me, Knowing You... with Alan Partridge (a spoof chat show with fictional guests). A typical question was "You've just published your autobiography. What's that about?" He managed to offend people on his show who would then attempt to disgrace the host. During his tenure on the show, Alan hit a child genius, unknowingly took cocaine, bribed rent boys, lost his wife's car in a bet, was openly homophobic, forced the resignation of a junior government minister and, in the series finale, his guest Lord Morgan of Glossop died of an apparent heart attack.

There was also a one off spoof-documentary about the show called Knowing, Knowing Me, Knowing You. It provided a behind-the-scenes look at how the show was put together and the antagonism between Alan and those who worked for him, as well as giving insight into the problems with his marriage to Carol.

[edit] The Day Today

On The Hour transferred to television as The Day Today in 1994, where Alan continued as the inept sports reporter ("This is Sports Desk... I'm Alan Partridge"). Here he bungled his way through a feature on the 1994 FIFA World Cup, gave a colourful report on the previous sporting season, made a complete mess of reporting the recent horse racing tournament, and was beaten up by a female martial-arts instructor.

[edit] Knowing Me, Knowing You

The transition to television was to be a success for Alan and was swiftly followed by a television version of Knowing Me, Knowing You... with Alan Partridge. The format was largely the same as the radio show, with the addition of a house band under the directorship of Glen Ponder (played by musical comedian Steve Brown). In the sixth episode, Alan accidentally shot dead one of his guests (Forbes McAllister) on air while examining one of Lord Byron's duelling pistols. He was cleared of any wrongdoing by an internal BBC investigation. The show featured an Alan Partridge tie and blazer badge set which, like the Alan Partridge face mask, was produced but never marketed - instead the famous "Tie and Blazer Badge Set" was included as part of a Boxed Set of videos released towards the end of the 1990s.

In reality, KMKYWAP was a huge success; in the fictional world of Alan Partridge, it suffered from terrible ratings. This was because of "poor scheduling" (The show was aired at the same time as the News at Ten^{[disambiguation needed ]}) and Alan's PA, Lynn, claimed that "the ratings started poorly and went downhill from there". In the end the show was taken off the air at the end of the first series.

In 1995, Alan hosted a Christmas special of KMKYWAP, humorously titled Knowing Me, Knowing Yule. One of his guests was the (fictional) director of programming at the BBC, Tony Hayers (later to become Alan's nemesis, played by David Schneider). Alan, with a characteristic lack of subtlety, was seen probing for a new series of KMKYWAP. However, the show was an unmitigated disaster for Alan, as his attempt at product placement was blatantly exposed, and the show climaxed with Alan punching both a man in a wheelchair and Tony Hayers (twice) with his hand inside a roast partridge. After punching Hayers for the first time, Partridge begged "please don't take my chat away from me", then after punching him a second time declared "I'll never work in broadcasting again". Mick Hucknall of Simply Red then played the show out. It was clearly the beginning of the end of his time at BBC television. He was "kept on the books", as it were, for a short while, but after a particularly harrowing meeting with Hayers at the BBC cafeteria (which involved assault by cheese) he was left in no doubt that his BBC TV career was over.

[edit] I'm Alan Partridge

Partridge next appeared in I'm Alan Partridge (1997), a look behind the scenes of his rapidly failing career. In this television series, he is seen having gained a slot on the fictional Radio Norwich. He continues to cause offence, this time mainly to his listeners. He also has a bad relationship with his colleague Dave Clifton (played by Phil Cornwell), Alan occasionally insults him while introducing him on his show (for example in ‘Alan Attraction’ Alan says "Here's a man who indeed won't be killing anyone with syphilis"). However Dave usually gets the better of Alan except in ‘Basic Alan’ where he tells Dave to "fuck off" after he torments him over a recent incident with a traffic cone, Dave is stunned by this and lays into Alan by claiming that "dead-air is a crime and that it is terrible that he has to fill it with swearing on his show". Alan's comeback refers to the correct time (7.01am) and that it is Dave's show and he is merely a guest whom Dave has failed to control, he then says "Read the smallprint on your cone-tract". By this stage in his life Alan had been kicked out by his wife and, after wandering around a John Menzies for five hours in a state of depressed homelessness, Alan had been forced to take up residence in the equally fictional Linton Travel Tavern, which he chose because it is "equidistant between London and Norwich". The first episode featured Alan meeting Tony Hayers, begging for a new series on the BBC. Hayers was not impressed, and Alan had to wrap up his production company Peartree Productions (a reference to the Christmas Carol "The Twelve Days of Christmas"), firing all its staff including Jill (whom he had feelings for and had one-night stand with; albeit unsuccessful). During his time at the Linton Travel Tavern, we discovered more about Alan's failed marriage, his children and his obsession with "Bangkok Chick Boys". In ‘Watership Alan’ he was crushed by a dead cow after insulting farmers on his show. And in ‘To Kill a Mocking Alan’ he was nearly kidnapped by his "number one fan", a crazed lunatic called Jed Maxwell.

In the final episode, Tony Hayers died after a fall from a roof, and one of Alan's old friends, Chris Feather, took over as head of programmes at the BBC. However, at the decisive moment when the new executive was about to sign a five-year contract, he keeled over and died, forcing Alan to forge the dead man's signature.

The programme itself is not presented as a documentary, but during the in-character commentary on the DVD release, Alan explains that it is in fact a "post-documentary"; all the events depicted in the series took place, but everyone in the show, apart from himself and his personal assistant Lynn Benfield (played by Felicity Montagu), were actors hired to portray them "after they had actually occurred".

Alan's next appearance was in a 1999 half-hour special filmed for Comic Relief in which Alan started to lose the plot, foreshadowing his mental breakdown in the second series of I'm Alan Partridge. A simulcast between BBC Two and Radio Norwich, Alan appears incoherent and incapable of keeping track of the format of his own show. A second Comic Relief appearance followed in 2001, showing him interviewing a boxing manager, played by Peter Kay. Eventually, this resulted in Alan taking on one of the boxers in the ring and being beaten by the boxer, the manager and his friend Michael.

Coogan was apparently reluctant to continue playing the character, but returned for a second series of I'm Alan Partridge in 2002.

In the second series Alan was temporarily living in a caravan while waiting for his new house to be built. Despite his five-year contract with the BBC, Alan claims to his old school teacher "Sweaty" Frank Raphael in ‘The Talented Mr. Alan’ that there was "bad blood" between them and they were "bitter bastards" plus every profession has its "shits", so they had to let him go.

Alan returned to radio, securing the "third best slot on Radio Norwich", presenting Norfolk Nights, a big leap from his former timeslot of 4am to 7am, when he presented Up With the Partridge. Alan also presents a military-based quiz show called Skirmish on the (fictional) cable station UK Conquest, and has a deal with Meteor Productions to make the Crash! Bang! Wallop!... What a Video/Scum on the Run series of car-crash videos.

In the period from his time at the Linton Travel Tavern to his residence in the temporary "static home", Alan suffered a mental breakdown and put on weight, or as he put it, was "clinically fed up" and "repellent to women for two years". This collapse culminated in Alan driving a Vauxhall Vectra to Dundee in his bare feet while gorging himself on Toblerone (in a similar incident, Alan recounts throwing all his tax receipts off a ferry). However, by 2002, his life was firmly back on track, save for the odd glitch. He even had a Ukrainian girlfriend called Sonja, who was 33 years old — 14 years younger than himself (a point Alan emphasises with the smug exclamation, "Cashback!"). This period in Alan's life is documented in his autobiography Bouncing Back, which Alan claims has been described as "lovely stuff" by entertainer Shakin' Stevens.

Memorable moments of this series include Alan dry-vomiting his way through a speech about fireplaces after impaling his foot on a spiked fence; mistakenly getting involved with swingers; attacking a six-foot stuffed Beefeater bear; his summing up the entire opening of The Spy Who Loved Me in less than a minute during a failed attempt at a 24-hour Bondathon; Lynn's baptism at her Baptist church and, of course, the sad pulping of his autobiography which, despite taking up four weeks of his life to write, simply wasn't selling well (partly because every anecdote ended with the phrase "Needless to say, I had the last laugh".) Unfortunately, Alan tells us, it seems the public was more concerned with buying gangster autobiographies like Bad Slags.

The second series saw a move away from the drier and more realistic style of the first, a move that was at odds with more recent sitcoms, most notably The Office. This led to it being less well received than the first. Surprisingly, producer and co-writer of the series, Armando Iannucci states in the commentary to his own DVD of The Armando Iannucci Shows, that he had recently re-watched the second series of I'm Alan Partridge, and describes it as "terrible". On the DVD commentary of the second series of I'm Alan Partridge, Steve Coogan appears surprised at the over-the-top style he used to play Alan in the 2002 series, calling it "big acting".

Steve Coogan's profile on the BBC Comedy website talks of another series featuring Alan Partridge, entitled I'm Still Alan Partridge.^[2] However this was in fact the provisional title for I'm Alan Partridge series 2.

[edit] Anglian Lives

In 2003, Alan again returned to our screen in a half-hour special of Anglian Lives (also known as "Anglian Alan"), a fictional regional BBC show. This was presented by Ray Woollard (Peter Baynham, who had appeared previously in 'I'm Alan Partridge' as the voice box using executive from the boat holiday company in 'Watership Alan') and "Digital Dave", and was basically a sycophantic look at Alan's career, past and present; the credits listed it as being executively produced by Alan himself. It shed more detail on Alan's hatred of London, his Toblerone addiction, and his future.

[edit] Steve Coogan as Alan Partridge and Other Less Successful Characters: Live

In October 2008 Alan returned as part of the tour "Steve Coogan is Alan Partridge and other less successful characters". Alan is now a life coach and claims to have helped such celebrities as Ross Kemp, Vinnie Jones, Jeremy Kyle, and the Cheeky Girls. Also, in a recent interview, Coogan confirmed that Partridge would return at some stage, for either a film or a Television special.^[3]

Mid Morning Matters with Alan Partridge[link]

In August 2010, it was reported that Alan Partridge would make a comeback series online for lager giant Fosters.^[4] On 8 October 2010, it was announced that the new show, entitled Alan Partridge's Mid Morning Matters, would premiere on 5 November 2010 on Foster's comedy site, http://www.fostersfunny.co.uk . In a press release, Steve Coogan announced, in character:

"I am delighted to announce that after years as a regional broadcaster on North Norfolk Digital my groundbreaking radio segment, Mid Morning Matters, will now be accessible to a potential audience of billions via the World Wide Web (www).

That it has taken Foster’s to help realise my dream of joining the information superhighway is a damning indictment of the established broadcasters whose shabby treatment of me on Sept 10th 2001 was frankly shabby. I made dozens of calls the next day, all of which were ignored.

My appreciation must go to Armando Iannucci and Baby Cow for ignoring the lies, God bless them. In the meantime I look forward to “hanging out ‘n’ chillin” with the MySpace generation."^[5]

After the six episodes aired online, in December 2010, Armando Iannucci confirmed on Twitter that "there will be 6 more Alan Partridge Mid Morning Matters starting in February." This series started on February 4, 2011, as episode 7, and ran every Friday until episode 12 on March 11, 2011.

In Mid Morning Matters Alan again works as a disc jockey, this time on the fictional station 'North Norfolk Digital'. He is occasionally joined by 'Side-kick Simon', played by Tim Key, who after Episode 10 is fired due to Alan's gradual dislike towards him. Alan is noticeably annoyed when he discovers that Simon had started guesting as a side-kick on another radio show (a late night comedy show). Much of the comedy surrounding Simon was his failure to grasp political correctness on sensitive issues which Alan would have to cover for when Simon slipped. After his departure Alan recruits a new side-kick, 'Zoe' and quickly develops a crush on her. In the twelfth and final episode of Mid Morning Matters, Zoe reveals she is going travelling for three months much to Alan's disappointment. The episode ends with a shot through the window into the recording booth as Zoe hugs Alan and gives him a kiss on the cheek; there is no sound and it is unknown what Alan has said to warrant this reaction. This is a rare low key ending to an Alan Partridge series with the high point culminating in Episode 10 when Alan scolds Side-kick Simon following a practical joke on Alan.

In Episode 3, released on 18 November 2010, Alan invites listeners to vote for "simply the best of Norfolk" (who is the best person Norfolk has produced?) in which he makes reference to Bernard Matthews ("he is tantalisingly close to producing the ten-pence turkey, now there's a thought..."). Matthews died a week later on 25 November 2010.

Following the series, Alan appeared again as part of the Red Nose Day 2011 set for a one-off show akin to the Mid Morning Matters arrangement, and here Side-kick Simon reappears in his former capacity. Here, Alan interviews a nun over whom he sneezes blood by mistake. The series was written by Steve Coogan, Rob Gibbons, Neil Gibbons and Armando Iannucci.

On 4 October 2011 co-writer Neil Gibbons announced on his Twitter feed that a second series of Mid Morning Matters was in development.^[6] On 10 November 2011 it was reported that the rights to the current and future series of Mid Morning Matters were to be acquired by Sky to be shown on subscriber-only channel Sky Atlantic.^[7]

[edit] I, Partridge: We Need to Talk About Alan

On 22 July 2011, Armando Iannucci announced on his Twitter feed that "Alan Partridge [had] delivered his autobiography to the publishers".^[8] The book was published in the UK by HarperCollins on 29 September 2011, and is entitled I, Partridge: We Need to Talk About Alan. It is available in hardcover and paperback, as well as in CD and downloadable audio and ePub formats, and is also set to be published in Australia on 1 November 2011 and in Canada on 1 December 2011.^[9] Alan Partridge promoted his autobiography on ITV's The Jonathan Ross Show show on 1 October 2011.^[10] It was met with positive reviews and was a commercial success, compared to his fictional last book 'Bouncing Back' which was panned by critics and didn't sell well.^[11][12][13]

The Alan Partridge Movie[link]

In August 2004 a small piece appeared in the Metro newspaper which claimed that: "Steve Coogan got the green light from a US studio to play the spoof DJ on the big screen." Coogan reportedly said: "It's always been my plan to make Alan go global. It's what he lives for really, not just doing the show on Radio Norwich." Other sources confirm the film will be going ahead and ITV has reported that Victoria Beckham will be playing a "demanding diva" in the film. Coogan has since denied that Beckham will appear.

In April 2005, Coogan's production firm Baby Cow announced that an Alan Partridge movie was in the pipeline.^[14][15] It was later revealed the film would involve an al-Qaeda siege. Due to the sensitivities of such a storyline after the 7 July 2005 London bombings, the project was put on hold,^[16] but in November 2007, further details of the film were released.^[17]

The plot of the film involved Alan Partridge attempting another comeback from local radio, only to have his ambitions thwarted when Middle Eastern terrorists hijack the BBC offices. Coogan had written some dialogue, but has said he is not sure whether he wants to revisit his most famous creation. "Part of me wants to do it, and other things," he said in an interview.^[18] Playwright Patrick Marber, whose early collaborations with Coogan included The Day Today and being the principal writer of both radio and TV versions of Knowing Me, Knowing You... with Alan Partridge, has also been working on the script, but the pair put their plans on hold following the London bombings, for fear the screenplay would appear in bad taste. Actress Felicity Montagu, who plays Partridge's PA Lynne, said last year^[when?]: "There was a lot of talk about it, but then the London bombings happened and it got put to one side. I'm sure Steve will write an Alan Partridge film eventually. But for the moment I don't think it's happening."^{[citation needed]}

In 2005, Armando Iannucci, who helped Coogan create Partridge, said he did not want to be involved in any movie spin-off, saying: "Steve wants to do an Alan Partridge film, but I couldn't bear to go through that again. For me, the idea of spending two more years in a room with that voice is more than I can take". However, in more recent interviews, Iannucci has been more positive about the idea and it is expected that both he and Peter Baynham will be involved in writing the film.

Armando Iannucci revealed in late March 2010 that Alan won’t be travelling to the USA as the rumours have suggested though: “At the moment we’re just deciding whether we should (make an Alan Partridge movie) and the ideas we’ve come up with are very much Alan in the UK and his ideas of what he could be. We don’t see Alan, for example getting Simon Cowell’s spot on American Idol and going over there. That’s too good for Alan. Alan’s future is always brighter in his head than it is in the real world. I think Alan harbours this distortion that, with reality TV bringing back your Keith Chegwins and your Tony Blackburns and so on that his time will come, but it hasn’t come, he hasn’t had that call.” ^[19]

Armando Iannucci confirmed in July 2010 that a film is definitely in the works and that Steve and himself have "now agreed a story for the film. It's NOT Alan goes to America." ^[20]

In November 2011 Peter Baynham said that the movie is happening next year.^[21]

The movie's screenplay is currently being written by Steve Coogan, Armando Iannucci, Rob Gibbons and Neil Gibbons - plus Peter Baynham - with the storyline completed in January 2012. ^[22]

In spring 2012, Armando Iannucci stated that the as-yet-untitled film would be shooting later in the year, released in 2013, and would be directed by Declan Lowney.^[23]

Other activity[link]

In 2004 Coogan also gave an interview with Now magazine, and when asked "Is it true that you're killing off Alan Partridge?", Coogan replied: "No, not at all. What's he up to at the moment? Well, I'd say he's being cryogenically preserved next to Walt Disney. Don't worry. When the day comes that I feel like I need to do something else with him, I'll defrost him and make him funny again."

In November 2008, Coogan stated that he has some ideas for what to do with Partridge next on TV and that he's glad to be well known for playing him, despite it over-shadowing most of his other ventures. "As a character he's given me the opportunity to play lots of other characters and to have other opportunities in film and television. So I can't resent him really. And I enjoy playing him, performing him because it's very comfortable. It's like putting on an old jacket".^[24]

List of appearances[link]

• On the Hour (BBC Radio 4, series) 1991
• On the Hour (BBC Radio 4, series) 1992
• Knowing Me Knowing You with Alan Partridge (BBC Radio 4, series) 1992
• Knowing, Knowing Me, Knowing You (BBC Radio 4, spoof documentary) 1992
• The Day Today (BBC Two, spoof news series) 1994
• Knowing Me Knowing You with Alan Partridge (BBC Two) 1994
• A Christmas Ramble (BBC Two, spoof documentary) 1994
• Comic Relief (BBC One, with John Thomson) 1995
• Knowing Me Knowing Yule with Alan Partridge (BBC Two, Christmas special) 1995
• The Big Snog (Live show in support of gay rights) 1996
• I'm Alan Partridge (BBC Two, series) 1997
• Clive Anderson: All Talk (BBC One, spoof interview) 1997
• Election Night Armistice (BBC Two, political satire show) 1997
• Brit Awards (ITV, presenting award for Best Video to the 'not unattractive' All Saints) 1998
• Steve Coogan Live: The Man Who Thinks He's It (Live show) 1998
• Stephen Fry's "Live from the Lighthouse" (Channel 4, spoof interview with Simon Pegg as an AIDS charity worker and Oasis guitarist Noel Gallagher) 1998
• Comic Relief (BBC Two, half-hour special featuring Bryan Ferry; Partridge sings a Kate Bush medley) 1999
• Comedy Awards (performing a duet with Elton John) 2000
• Comic Relief (BBC One, featuring Peter Kay) 2001
• I'm Alan Partridge (BBC Two, series) 2002
• Anglian Lives (BBC Two, spoof career retrospective - also featuring Peter Baynham) 2003
• Cream of British Comedy (Live Show, as well as the live show a DVD was released includes Radio Norwich extras such as Alan meets Roger Daltrey) 2005
• Comic Relief (BBC One, monologue; KMKY-style (fictional) interview featuring Simon Pegg as the Milky Bar Kid) 2005
• Steve Coogan as Alan Partridge and Other Less Successful Characters: Live (Live tour, Alan was a featured character in Coogan's 2008 live tour, where he has become a life coach) 2008
• Mid Morning Matters with Alan Partridge (Foster's Funny/Sky Atlantic, New Alan Partridge web/TV series) 2010-present
• Comic Relief Mid Morning Matters (BBC One, Comic Relief Special of Mid Morning Matters) 2011
• The Jonathan Ross Show (ITV1, Spoof Interview with Jonathan Ross promoting his autobiography) 2011
• The Richard Bacon Show (BBC Radio 5Live, Spoof Interview with Richard Bacon promoting his autobiography) 2011
• Under 1 Roof (Charity show appearance) 2011

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Alan Partridge

• Alan Partridge at BBC Online
• British Sitcom Guide

Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky visiting Vancouver, British Columbia in 2004
Other names	Avram Noam Chomsky
Born	(1928-12-07) December 7, 1928 (age 83) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Era	20th / 21st-century philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	Generative linguistics, Analytic philosophy
Main interests	Linguistics · Psychology Philosophy of language Philosophy of mind Politics · Ethics
Notable ideas	Generative grammar, universal grammar, transformational grammar, government and binding, X-bar theory, Chomsky hierarchy, context-free grammar, principles and parameters, Minimalist program, language acquisition device, poverty of the stimulus, Chomsky–Schützenberger theorem, Chomsky Normal Form, propaganda model[1]
Influenced by Dwight Macdonald,[2] Pāṇini, Bertrand Russell,[3] Ludwig Wittgenstein, John Dewey, Mikhail Bakunin, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Adam Smith, Zellig Harris, Rudolf Rocker, Immanuel Kant, René Descartes, George Orwell, C. West Churchman, Alan Turing, W. V. O. Quine, Russian literature, Hebrew literature[4]
Influenced Colin McGinn, Edward Said, Christopher Hitchens, Steven Pinker, Peter Ludlow, Tanya Reinhart, Morris Halle, Gilbert Harman, Jerry Fodor, Howard Lasnik, Robert Fisk, Neil Smith, Ray Jackendoff, Norbert Hornstein, Jean Bricmont, Marc Hauser, Norman Finkelstein, Robert Lees, Hugo Chavez, Mark Baker, Julian Boyd, Ray C. Dougherty, Derek Bickerton, Amy Goodman, Michael Albert

Avram Noam Chomsky (/ˈnoʊm ˈtʃɒmski/; born December 7, 1928) is an American linguist, philosopher,^[5][6] cognitive scientist, historian, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor (Emeritus) in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years.^[7] Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics"^[8][9][10] and a major figure of analytic philosophy.^[5] His work has influenced fields such as computer science, mathematics, and psychology.^[11][12]

Ideologically identifying with anarcho-syndicalism and libertarian socialism, Chomsky is known for his critiques of U.S. foreign policy^[13] and contemporary capitalism,^[14] and he has been described as a prominent cultural figure.^[15] His media criticism has included Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988), co-written with Edward S. Herman, an analysis articulating the propaganda model theory for examining the media.

According to the Arts and Humanities Citation Index in 1992, Chomsky was cited as a source more often than any other living scholar from 1980 to 1992, and was the eighth most cited source overall.^{[16][17][18][19]} Chomsky is the author of over 100 books.^[20] He is credited as the creator or co-creator of the Chomsky hierarchy, the universal grammar theory, and the Chomsky–Schützenberger theorem.

Life and career[link]

Chomsky was born on December 7, 1928, to Jewish parents in the affluent East Oak Lane neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the elder son of noted professor of Hebrew at Gratz College and IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) member William Chomsky (1896–1977), a native of Ukraine. His mother, Elsie Chomsky (née Simonofsky)—a native of what is present-day Belarus—grew up in the United States and, unlike her husband, spoke "ordinary New York English". Chomsky's parents' first language was Yiddish,^[21] but Chomsky said it was "taboo" in his family to speak it.^[21] Although Chomsky's mother was part of the radical activism in the 1930s, he was influenced largely by his uncle who, having never passed 4th grade, owned a newsstand that acted as an "intellectual center [where] professors of this and that argu[ed] all night".^[22] Chomsky was influenced also by being a part of a Hebrew-based, Zionist organization, as well as by hanging around anarchist bookstores.^[22]

He describes his family as living in a sort of "Jewish ghetto", split into a "Yiddish side" and "Hebrew side", with his family aligning with the latter and bringing him up "immersed in Hebrew culture and literature", though he means more a "cultural ghetto than a physical one".^[23] Chomsky also describes tensions he experienced with Irish Catholics and German Catholics and anti-semitism in the mid-1930s. He recalls "beer parties" celebrating the fall of Paris to the Nazis.^[23] In a discussion of the irony of his staying in the 1980s in a Jesuit House in Central America, Chomsky explained that during his childhood, "We were the only Jewish family around. I grew up with a visceral fear of Catholics. They're the people who beat you up on your way to school. So I knew when they came out of that building down the street, which was the Jesuit school, they were raving anti-Semites. So childhood memories took a long time to overcome."^[24]

Chomsky remembers the first article he wrote was at age 10 while a student at Oak Lane Country Day School about the threat of the spread of fascism, following the fall of Barcelona in the Spanish Civil War. From the age of 12 or 13, he identified more fully with anarchist politics.^[25]

A graduate of Central High School of Philadelphia, Chomsky began studying philosophy and linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania in 1945, taking classes with philosophers such as C. West Churchman and Nelson Goodman and linguist Zellig Harris. Harris's teaching included his discovery of transformations as a mathematical analysis of language structure (mappings from one subset to another in the set of sentences). Chomsky referred to the morphophonemic rules in his 1951 master's thesis—The Morphophonemics of Modern Hebrew—as transformations in the sense of Carnap's 1938 notion of rules of transformation (vs. rules of formation), and subsequently reinterpreted the notion of grammatical transformations in a very different way from Harris, as operations on the productions of a context-free grammar (derived from Post production systems). Harris's political views were instrumental in shaping those of Chomsky.^[26] Chomsky earned a BA in 1949 and an MA in 1951.

In 1949, he married linguist Carol Schatz. They remained married for 59 years until her death from cancer in December 2008.^[27] The couple had two daughters, Aviva (b. 1957) and Diane (b. 1960), and a son, Harry (b. 1967). With his wife Carol, Chomsky spent time in 1953 living in HaZore'a, a kibbutz in Israel. Asked in an interview whether the stay was "a disappointment" Chomsky replied, "No, I loved it"; however, he "couldn't stand the ideological atmosphere" and "fervent nationalism" in the early 1950s at the kibbutz, with Stalin being defended by many of the left-leaning kibbutz members who chose to paint a rosy image of future possibilities and contemporary realities in the USSR.^[28] Chomsky notes seeing many positive elements in the commune-like living of the kibbutz, in which parents and children lived together in separate houses, and when asked whether there were "lessons that we have learned from the history of the kibbutz", responded,^[29][30] that in "some respects, the kibbutzim came closer to the anarchist ideal than any other attempt that lasted for more than a very brief moment before destruction, or that was on anything like a similar scale. In these respects, I think they were extremely attractive and successful; apart from personal accident, I probably would have lived there myself – for how long, it's hard to guess."

Chomsky received his PhD in linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1955. He conducted part of his doctoral research during four years at Harvard University as a Harvard Junior Fellow. In his doctoral thesis, he began to develop some of his linguistic ideas, elaborating on them in his 1957 book Syntactic Structures, one of his best-known works in linguistics.

Chomsky joined the staff of MIT in 1955 and in 1961 was appointed full professor in the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics (now the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy). From 1966 to 1976 he held the Ferrari P. Ward Professorship of Modern Languages and Linguistics, and in 1976 he was appointed Institute Professor. As of 2010, Chomsky has taught at MIT continuously for 55 years.

In February 1967, Chomsky became one of the leading opponents of the Vietnam War with the publication of his essay, "The Responsibility of Intellectuals",^[31] in The New York Review of Books. This was followed by his 1969 book, American Power and the New Mandarins, a collection of essays that established him at the forefront of American dissent. His far-reaching criticisms of U.S. foreign policy and the legitimacy of U.S. power have raised controversy,^[32][33] and he is frequently sought out for his views by publications and news outlets internationally. In 1977 he delivered the Huizinga Lecture in Leiden, the Netherlands, under the title: Intellectuals and the State.

Chomsky has received death threats because of his criticisms of U.S. foreign policy.^[34] He was also on a list of planned targets created by Theodore Kaczynski, better known as the Unabomber; during the period that Kaczynski was at large, Chomsky had all of his mail checked for explosives.^[34] He states that he often receives undercover police protection, in particular while on the MIT campus, although he does not agree with the police protection.^[34]

Chomsky resides in Lexington, Massachusetts, and travels often, giving lectures on politics.

Thought[link]

Linguistics[link]

Chomskyan linguistics, beginning with his Syntactic Structures, a distillation of his Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory (1955, 75), challenges structural linguistics and introduces transformational grammar. This approach takes utterances (sequences of words) to have a syntax characterized by a formal grammar; in particular, a context-free grammar extended with transformational rules.

Perhaps his most influential and time-tested contribution to the field is the claim that modeling knowledge of language using a formal grammar accounts for the "productivity" or "creativity" of language. In other words, a formal grammar of a language can explain the ability of a hearer-speaker to produce and interpret an infinite number of utterances, including novel ones, with a limited set of grammatical rules and a finite set of terms. He has always acknowledged his debt to Pāṇini for his modern notion of an explicit generative grammar, although it is also related to rationalist ideas of a priori knowledge.

It is a popular misconception that Chomsky proved that language is entirely innate, and that he discovered a "universal grammar" (UG). In fact, Chomsky simply observed that while a human baby and a kitten are both capable of inductive reasoning, if they are exposed to exactly the same linguistic data, the human child will always acquire the ability to understand and produce language, while the kitten will never acquire either ability. Chomsky labeled whatever the relevant capacity the human has that the cat lacks the "language acquisition device" (LAD) and suggested that one of the tasks for linguistics should be to figure out what the LAD is and what constraints it puts on the range of possible human languages. The universal features that would result from these constraints are often termed "universal grammar" or UG.^[35]

The Principles and Parameters approach (P&P)—developed in his Pisa 1979 Lectures, later published as Lectures on Government and Binding (LGB)—makes strong claims regarding universal grammar: that the grammatical principles underlying languages are innate and fixed, and the differences among the world's languages can be characterized in terms of parameter settings in the brain (such as the pro-drop parameter, which indicates whether an explicit subject is always required, as in English, or can be optionally dropped, as in Spanish), which are often likened to switches. (Hence the term principles and parameters, often given to this approach.) In this view, a child learning a language need only acquire the necessary lexical items (words, grammatical morphemes, and idioms), and determine the appropriate parameter settings, which can be done based on a few key examples.

Proponents of this view argue that the pace at which children learn languages is inexplicably rapid, unless children have an innate ability to learn languages. The similar steps followed by children all across the world when learning languages, and the fact that children make certain characteristic errors as they learn their first language, whereas other seemingly logical kinds of errors never occur (and, according to Chomsky, should be attested if a purely general, rather than language-specific, learning mechanism were being employed), are also pointed to as indications of innateness.

More recently, in his Minimalist Program (1995), while retaining the core concept of "principles and parameters," Chomsky attempts a major overhaul of the linguistic machinery involved in the LGB model, stripping from it all but the barest necessary elements, while advocating a general approach to the architecture of the human language faculty that emphasizes principles of economy and optimal design, reverting to a derivational approach to generation, in contrast with the largely representational approach of classic P&P.

Chomsky's ideas have had a strong influence on researchers of language acquisition in children, though many researchers in this area such as Elizabeth Bates^[36] and Michael Tomasello^[37] argue very strongly against Chomsky's theories, and instead advocate emergentist or connectionist theories, explaining language with a number of general processing mechanisms in the brain that interact with the extensive and complex social environment in which language is used and learned.

His best-known work in phonology is The Sound Pattern of English (1968), written with Morris Halle (and often known as simply SPE). This work has had a great significance for the development in the field. While phonological theory has since moved beyond "SPE phonology" in many important respects, the SPE system is considered the precursor of some of the most influential phonological theories today, including autosegmental phonology, lexical phonology and optimality theory. Chomsky no longer publishes on phonology.

Generative grammar[link]

The Chomskyan approach towards syntax, often termed generative grammar, studies grammar as a body of knowledge possessed by language users. Since the 1960s, Chomsky has maintained that much of this knowledge is innate, implying that children need only learn certain parochial features of their native languages.^[38] The innate body of linguistic knowledge is often termed universal grammar. From Chomsky's perspective, the strongest evidence for the existence of Universal Grammar is simply the fact that children successfully acquire their native languages in so little time. Furthermore, he argues that there is an enormous gap between the linguistic stimuli to which children are exposed and the rich linguistic knowledge they attain (the "poverty of the stimulus" argument). The knowledge of Universal Grammar would serve to bridge that gap.

Chomsky's theories have been immensely influential within linguistics, but they have also received criticism. One recurring criticism of the Chomskyan variety of generative grammar is that it is Anglocentric and Eurocentric, and that often linguists working in this tradition have a tendency to base claims about Universal Grammar on a very small sample of languages, sometimes just one. Initially, the Eurocentrism was exhibited in an overemphasis on the study of English. However, hundreds of different languages have now received at least some attention within Chomskyan linguistic analyses.^{[39][40][41][42][43]} In spite of the diversity of languages that have been characterized by UG derivations, critics continue to argue that the formalisms within Chomskyan linguistics are Anglocentric and misrepresent the properties of languages that are different from English.^[44][45][46] Thus, Chomsky's approach has been criticized as a form of linguistic imperialism.^[47] In addition, Chomskyan linguists rely heavily on the intuitions of native speakers regarding which sentences of their languages are well-formed. This practice has been criticized on general methodological grounds. Some psychologists and psycholinguists,^[who?] though sympathetic to Chomsky's overall program, have argued that Chomskyan linguists pay insufficient attention to experimental data from language processing, with the consequence that their theories are not psychologically plausible. Other critics (see language learning) have questioned whether it is necessary to posit Universal Grammar to explain child language acquisition, arguing that domain-general learning mechanisms are sufficient.

Today there are many different branches of generative grammar; one can view grammatical frameworks such as head-driven phrase structure grammar, lexical functional grammar, and combinatory categorial grammar as broadly Chomskyan and generative in orientation, but with significant differences in execution.

Chomsky hierarchy[link]

Chomsky is famous for investigating various kinds of formal languages and whether or not they might be capable of capturing key properties of human language. His Chomsky hierarchy partitions formal grammars into classes, or groups, with increasing expressive power, i.e., each successive class can generate a broader set of formal languages than the one before. Interestingly, Chomsky argues that modeling some aspects of human language requires a more complex formal grammar (as measured by the Chomsky hierarchy) than modeling others. For example, while a regular language is powerful enough to model English morphology, it is not powerful enough to model English syntax. In addition to being relevant in linguistics, the Chomsky hierarchy has also become important in computer science (especially in compiler construction and automata theory).^[48] Indeed, there is an equivalence between the Chomsky language hierarchy and the different kinds of automata. Thus theorems about languages are often dealt with as either languages (grammars) or automata.

An alternate method of dealing with languages is based upon Formal Power series.^[49] Formal Power series as well as the relationship between languages and semi-groups continued to occupy M. P. Schützenberger at the Sorbonne. Formal Power Series are similar to the Taylor Series one encounters in a course on Calculus, and it is especially useful for languages where words (terminal symbols) are commutative.^[50]

Politics[link]

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v t e

Chomsky has stated that his "personal visions are fairly traditional anarchist ones, with origins in the Enlightenment and classical liberalism",^[51] and he has praised libertarian socialism.^[52] Although Chomsky tries to avoid the ambiguity of labels, his political views are often characterized in news accounts as "leftist"^{[53][54][55][56]} or "left-wing," and he has described himself as an anarcho-syndicalist.^[57] He is a member of the Campaign for Peace and Democracy and the Industrial Workers of the World international union.^[58] Chomsky is also a member of the International Organization for a Participatory Society which he describes as having the potential to "carry us a long way towards unifying the many initiatives here and around the world and molding them into a powerful and effective force."^[59][60] He published a book on anarchism titled Chomsky on Anarchism, published by the anarchist book collective AK Press in 2006.

Chomsky has engaged in political activism all of his adult life and expressed opinions on politics and world events, which are widely cited, publicized, and discussed. Chomsky has in turn argued that his views are those the powerful do not want to hear, and for this reason he is considered an American political dissident.

Chomsky asserts that authority, unless justified, is inherently illegitimate, and that the burden of proof is on those in authority. If this burden can't be met, the authority in question should be dismantled. Authority for its own sake is inherently unjustified. An example given by Chomsky of a legitimate authority is that exerted by an adult to prevent a young child from wandering into traffic.^[61] He contends that there is little moral difference between chattel slavery and renting one's self to an owner or "wage slavery". He feels that it is an attack on personal integrity that undermines individual freedom. He holds that workers should own and control their workplace, a view held (as he notes) by the Lowell Mill Girls.^[62]

Chomsky has strongly criticized the foreign policy of the United States. He claims double standards in a foreign policy preaching democracy and freedom for all while allying itself with non-democratic and repressive organizations and states such as Chile under Augusto Pinochet and argues that this results in massive human rights violations. He often argues that America's intervention in foreign nations, including the secret aid given to the Contras in Nicaragua, an event of which he has been very critical, fits any standard description of terrorism,^{[63][dead link]} including "official definitions in the US Code and Army Manuals in the early 1980s."^[64][65] Before its collapse, Chomsky also condemned Soviet imperialism; for example in 1986 during a question/answer following a lecture he gave at Universidad Centroamericana in Nicaragua, when challenged about how he could "talk about North American imperialism and Russian imperialism in the same breath," Chomsky responded: "One of the truths about the world is that there are two superpowers, one a huge power which happens to have its boot on your neck; another, a smaller power which happens to have its boot on other people's necks. I think that anyone in the Third World would be making a grave error if they succumbed to illusions about these matters."^[66]

Regarding the death of Osama bin Laden, Chomsky stated: "We might ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush's compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic. Uncontroversially, his crimes vastly exceed bin Laden’s, and he is not a 'suspect' but uncontroversially the 'decider' who gave the orders to commit the 'supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole' (quoting the Nuremberg Tribunal) for which Nazi criminals were hanged: the hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions of refugees, destruction of much of the country, [and] the bitter sectarian conflict that has now spread to the rest of the region."^[67]

He has argued that the mass media in the United States largely serve as a "bought priesthood"^[68] of the U.S. government and U.S.-based corporations, with the three intertwined through common interests. In a famous reference to Walter Lippmann, Chomsky along with his coauthor Edward S. Herman has written that the American media manufactures consent among the public. Chomsky has condemned the 2010 US Supreme Court Citizens United ruling revoking the limits on campaign finance, calling it a "corporate takeover of democracy."^[69]

Chomsky opposes the U.S. global "war on drugs", claiming its language is misleading, and refers to it as "the war on certain drugs." He favors drug policy reform, in education and prevention rather than military or police action as a means of reducing drug use.^[70] In an interview in 1999, Chomsky argued that, whereas crops such as tobacco receive no mention in governmental exposition, other non-profitable crops, such as marijuana are attacked because of the effect achieved by persecuting the poor.^[71] He has stated:

U.S. domestic drug policy does not carry out its stated goals, and policymakers are well aware of that. If it isn't about reducing substance abuse, what is it about? It is reasonably clear, both from current actions and the historical record, that substances tend to be criminalized when they are associated with the so-called dangerous classes, that the criminalization of certain substances is a technique of social control.^[72]

Chomsky is critical of the American "state capitalist" system and big business; he describes himself as a socialist, specifically an anarcho-syndicalist, and is critical of "authoritarian" communist branches of socialism.^{[citation needed]} He also believes that socialist values exemplify the rational and morally consistent extension of original unreconstructed classical liberal and radical humanist ideas to an industrial context. He believes that society should be highly organized and based on democratic control of communities and work places. He believes that the radical humanist ideas of his two major influences, Bertrand Russell and John Dewey, were "rooted in the Enlightenment and classical liberalism, and retain their revolutionary character."^[73]

Chomsky has stated that he believes the United States remains the "greatest country in the world",^[74] a comment that he later clarified by saying, "Evaluating countries is senseless and I would never put things in those terms, but that some of America's advances, particularly in the area of free speech, that have been achieved by centuries of popular struggle, are to be admired."^[75] He has also said "In many respects, the United States is the freest country in the world. I don't just mean in terms of limits on state coercion, though that's true too, but also in terms of individual relations. The United States comes closer to classlessness in terms of interpersonal relations than virtually any society."^[76]

Chomsky objects to the criticism that anarchism is inconsistent with support for government welfare, stating in part:

One can, of course, take the position that we don't care about the problems people face today, and want to think about a possible tomorrow. OK, but then don't pretend to have any interest in human beings and their fate, and stay in the seminar room and intellectual coffee house with other privileged people. Or one can take a much more humane position: I want to work, today, to build a better society for tomorrow – the classical anarchist position, quite different from the slogans in the question. That's exactly right, and it leads directly to support for the people facing problems today: for enforcement of health and safety regulation, provision of national health insurance, support systems for people who need them, etc. That is not a sufficient condition for organizing for a different and better future, but it is a necessary condition. Anything else will receive the well-merited contempt of people who do not have the luxury to disregard the circumstances in which they live, and try to survive.^[77]

Chomsky holds views that can be summarized as anti-war but not strictly pacifist. He prominently opposed the Vietnam War and most other wars in his lifetime. He expressed these views with tax resistance and peace walks. In 1968, he signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War.^[78] He published a number of articles about the war in Vietnam, including "The Responsibility of Intellectuals". He maintains that U.S. involvement in World War II to defeat the Axis powers was probably justified, with the caveat that a preferable outcome would have been to end or prevent the war through earlier diplomacy. He believes that the dropping of nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were "among the most unspeakable crimes in history".^[79]

Chomsky has made many criticisms of the Israeli government, its supporters, the United States' support of the government, and its treatment of the Palestinian people, arguing that " 'supporters of Israel' are in reality supporters of its moral degeneration and probable ultimate destruction" and that "Israel's very clear choice of expansion over security may well lead to that consequence."^[80] Chomsky disagreed with the founding of Israel as a Jewish state, saying, "I don't think a Jewish or Christian or Islamic state is a proper concept. I would object to the United States as a Christian state."^[81] Chomsky hesitated before publishing work critical of Israeli policies while his parents were alive, because he "knew it would hurt them" he says, "mostly because of their friends, who reacted hysterically to views like those expressed in my work."^[82] On May 16, 2010, Israeli authorities detained Chomsky and ultimately refused his entry to the West Bank via Jordan.^[83] A spokesman for the Israeli Prime Minister indicated that the refusal of entry was simply due to a border guard who "overstepped his authority" and a second attempt to enter would likely be allowed.^[84] Chomsky disagreed, saying that the Interior Ministry official who interviewed him was taking instructions from his superiors.^[84] Chomsky maintained that based on the several hours of interviewing, he was denied entry because of the things he says and because he was visiting a university in the West Bank but no Israeli universities.^[84]

Chomsky has a broad view of free-speech rights, especially in the mass media, and opposes censorship. He has stated that "with regard to freedom of speech there are basically two positions: you defend it vigorously for views you hate, or you reject it and prefer Stalinist/fascist standards".^[85] With reference to the United States diplomatic cables leak, Chomsky suggested that "perhaps the most dramatic revelation ... is the bitter hatred of democracy that is revealed both by the U.S. Government -- Hillary Clinton, others -- and also by the diplomatic service."^[86] Chomsky refuses to take legal action against those who may have libeled him and prefers to counter libels through open letters in newspapers. One notable example of this approach is his response to an article by Emma Brockes in The Guardian which alleged he denied the existence of the Srebrenica massacre.^[87][88][89] Chomsky's complaint prompted The Guardian to publish an apologetic correction and to withdraw the article from the paper's website.^[90]

Chomsky has frequently stated that there is no connection between his work in linguistics and his political views and is generally critical of the idea that competent discussion of political topics requires expert knowledge in academic fields. In a 1969 interview, he said regarding the connection between his politics and his work in linguistics:

I still feel myself that there is a kind of tenuous connection. I would not want to overstate it but I think it means something to me at least. I think that anyone's political ideas or their ideas of social organization must be rooted ultimately in some concept of human nature and human needs.^[91]

Some critics have accused Chomsky of hypocrisy when, in spite of his political criticism of American and European military imperialism, early research at the institution (MIT) where he did his linguistic research had been substantially funded by the American military.^[92] Chomsky makes the argument that because he has received funding from the U.S. military, he has an even greater responsibility to criticize and resist its immoral actions.

He is also an outspoken advocate against the use of the death penalty and has spoken against the execution of Steven Woods.

I think the death penalty is a crime no matter what the circumstances, and it is particularly awful in the Steven Woods case. I strongly oppose the execution of Steven Woods on September 13, 2011.

In March 2012,^[93] Chomsky endorsed Jill Stein for President of the United States in 2012, saying,

As you know, popular anger at the political and economic institutions, and the subordination of the former to the latter, has reached historic heights. And for sound reasons. There could hardly be a better time to open up political debate to the just anger and frustrations of citizens who are watching the country move towards what might be irreversible decline while a tiny sector of concentrated wealth and power implements policies of benefit to them and opposed by the general population, whom they are casting adrift.

Nick Cohen has criticised Chomsky for frequently making overly critical statements about Western governments, especially the US, and for allegedly refusing to retract his speculations when facts become available which disprove them.^[94]

Media[link]

Another focus of Chomsky's political work has been an analysis of mainstream mass media (especially in the United States), its structures and constraints, and its perceived role in supporting big business and government interests. Edward S. Herman and Chomsky's book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988) explores this topic in depth, presenting their "propaganda model" of the news media with numerous detailed case studies demonstrating it. According to this propaganda model, more democratic societies like the U.S. use subtle, non-violent means of control, unlike totalitarian systems, where physical force can readily be used to coerce the general population. In an often-quoted remark, Chomsky states that "propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state." (Media Control)

The model attempts to explain this perceived systemic bias of the mass media in terms of structural economic causes rather than a conspiracy of people. It argues the bias derives from five "filters" that all published news must "pass through," which combine to systematically distort news coverage.

In explaining the first filter, ownership, he notes that most major media outlets are owned by large corporations. The second, funding, notes that the outlets derive the majority of their funding from advertising, not readers. Thus, since they are profit-oriented businesses selling a product—readers and audiences—to other businesses (advertisers), the model expects them to publish news that reflects the desires and values of those businesses. In addition, the news media are dependent on government institutions and major businesses with strong biases as sources (the third filter) for much of their information. Flak, the fourth filter, refers to the various pressure groups that attack the media for supposed bias. Norms, the fifth filter, refer to the common conceptions shared by those in the profession of journalism. (Note: in the original text, published in 1988, the fifth filter was "anticommunism". However, with the fall of the Soviet Union, it has been broadened to allow for shifts in public opinion.) The model describes how the media form a decentralized and non-conspiratorial but nonetheless very powerful propaganda system, that is able to mobilize an elite consensus, frame public debate within elite perspectives and at the same time give the appearance of democratic consent.

Chomsky and Herman test their model empirically by picking "paired examples"—pairs of events that were objectively similar except for the alignment of domestic elite interests. They use a number of such examples to attempt to show that in cases where an "official enemy" does something (like murder of a religious official), the press investigates thoroughly and devotes a great amount of coverage to the matter, thus victims of "enemy" states are considered "worthy". But when the domestic government or an ally does the same thing (or worse), the press downplays the story, thus victims of US or US client states are considered "unworthy."

They also test their model against the case that is often held up as the best example of a free and aggressively independent press, the media coverage of the Tet Offensive during the Vietnam War. Even in this case, they argue that the press was behaving subserviently to elite interests.

Science[link]

Chomsky sees science as a straightforward search for explanation, and rejects the views of it as a catalog of facts or mechanical explanations. In this light, the majority of his contributions to science have been frameworks and hypotheses, rather than "discoveries."^[95]

As such, he considers certain so-called post-structuralist or postmodern critiques of logic and reason to be nonsensical:

I have spent a lot of my life working on questions such as these, using the only methods I know of; those condemned here as "science", "rationality," "logic," and so on. I therefore read the papers with some hope that they would help me "transcend" these limitations, or perhaps suggest an entirely different course. I'm afraid I was disappointed. Admittedly, that may be my own limitation. Quite regularly, "my eyes glaze over" when I read polysyllabic discourse on the themes of poststructuralism and postmodernism; what I understand is largely truism or error, but that is only a fraction of the total word count. True, there are lots of other things I don't understand: the articles in the current issues of math and physics journals, for example. But there is a difference. In the latter case, I know how to get to understand them, and have done so, in cases of particular interest to me; and I also know that people in these fields can explain the contents to me at my level, so that I can gain what (partial) understanding I may want. In contrast, no one seems to be able to explain to me why the latest post-this-and-that is (for the most part) other than truism, error, or gibberish, and I do not know how to proceed.^[96]

Although Chomsky believes that a scientific background is important to teach proper reasoning, he holds that science in general is "inadequate" to understand complicated problems like human affairs:

Science talks about very simple things, and asks hard questions about them. As soon as things become too complex, science can’t deal with them... But it’s a complicated matter: Science studies what’s at the edge of understanding, and what’s at the edge of understanding is usually fairly simple. And it rarely reaches human affairs. Human affairs are way too complicated.^[97]

Psychology[link]

Chomsky's work in linguistics has had profound implications for modern psychology.^[12] For Chomsky, linguistics is a branch of cognitive psychology; genuine insights in linguistics imply concomitant understandings of aspects of mental processing and human nature. His theory of a universal grammar was seen by many as a direct challenge to the established behaviorist theories of the time and had major consequences for understanding how children learn language and what, exactly, the ability to use language is.

In 1959, Chomsky published an influential critique of B.F. Skinner's Verbal Behavior, a book in which Skinner offered a theoretical account of language in functional, behavioral terms. He defined "Verbal Behavior" as learned behavior that has characteristic consequences delivered through the learned behavior of others. This makes for a view of communicative behaviors much larger than that usually addressed by linguists. Skinner's approach focused on the circumstances in which language was used; for example, asking for water was functionally a different response than labeling something as water, responding to someone asking for water, etc. These functionally different kinds of responses, which required in turn separate explanations, sharply contrasted both with traditional notions of language and Chomsky's psycholinguistic approach. Chomsky thought that a functionalist explanation restricting itself to questions of communicative performance ignored important questions. (Chomsky—Language and Mind, 1968). He focused on questions concerning the operation and development of innate structures for syntax capable of creatively organizing, cohering, adapting and combining words and phrases into intelligible utterances.

In the review Chomsky emphasized that the scientific application of behavioral principles from animal research is severely lacking in explanatory adequacy and is furthermore particularly superficial as an account of human verbal behavior because a theory restricting itself to external conditions, to "what is learned," cannot adequately account for generative grammar. Chomsky raised the examples of rapid language acquisition of children, including their quickly developing ability to form grammatical sentences, and the universally creative language use of competent native speakers to highlight the ways in which Skinner's view exemplified under-determination of theory by evidence. He argued that to understand human verbal behavior such as the creative aspects of language use and language development, one must first postulate a genetic linguistic endowment. The assumption that important aspects of language are the product of universal innate ability runs counter to Skinner's radical behaviorism.

Chomsky's 1959 review has drawn fire from a number of critics, the most famous criticism being that of Kenneth MacCorquodale's 1970 paper On Chomsky’s Review of Skinner’s Verbal Behavior (Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, volume 13, pages 83–99). MacCorquodale's argument was updated and expanded in important respects by Nathan Stemmer in a 1990 paper, Skinner's Verbal Behavior, Chomsky's review, and mentalism (Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, volume 54, pages 307–319). These and similar critiques have raised certain points not generally acknowledged outside of behavioral psychology, such as the claim that Chomsky did not possess an adequate understanding of either behavioral psychology in general, or the differences between Skinner's behaviorism and other varieties. Consequently, it is argued that he made several serious errors. On account of these perceived problems, the critics maintain that the review failed to demonstrate what it has often been cited as doing. As such, it is averred that those most influenced by Chomsky's paper probably either already substantially agreed with Chomsky or never actually read it. The review has been further critiqued for misrepresenting the work of Skinner and others, including by quoting out of context.^[98] Chomsky has maintained that the review was directed at the way Skinner's variant of behavioral psychology "was being used in Quinean empiricism and naturalization of philosophy."^[99]

It has been claimed that Chomsky's critique of Skinner's methodology and basic assumptions paved the way for the "cognitive revolution", the shift in American psychology between the 1950s through the 1970s from being primarily behavioral to being primarily cognitive. In his 1966 Cartesian Linguistics and subsequent works, Chomsky laid out an explanation of human language faculties that has become the model for investigation in some areas of psychology. Much of the present conception of how the mind works draws directly from ideas that found their first persuasive author of modern times in Chomsky.

There are three key ideas. First is that the mind is "cognitive", or that the mind actually contains mental states, beliefs, doubts, and so on. Second, he argued that most of the important properties of language and mind are innate. The acquisition and development of a language is a result of the unfolding of innate propensities triggered by the experiential input of the external environment. The link between human innate aptitude to language and heredity has been at the core of the debate opposing Noam Chomsky to Jean Piaget at the Abbaye de Royaumont in 1975 (Language and Learning. The Debate between Jean Piaget and Noam Chomsky, Harvard University Press, 1980). Although links between the genetic setup of humans and aptitude to language have been suggested at that time and in later discussions, we are still far from understanding the genetic bases of human language. Work derived from the model of selective stabilization of synapses set up by Jean-Pierre Changeux, Philippe Courrège and Antoine Danchin,^[100] and more recently developed experimentally and theoretically by Jacques Mehler and Stanislas Dehaene in particular in the domain of numerical cognition lend support to the Chomskyan "nativism". It does not, however, provide clues about the type of rules that would organize neuronal connections to permit language competence. Subsequent psychologists have extended this general "nativist" thesis beyond language. Lastly, Chomsky made the concept of "modularity" a critical feature of the mind's cognitive architecture. The mind is composed of an array of interacting, specialized subsystems with limited flows of inter-communication. This model contrasts sharply with the old idea that any piece of information in the mind could be accessed by any other cognitive process (optical illusions, for example, cannot be "turned off" even when they are known to be illusions).

Debates[link]

Chomsky at the World Social Forum (Porto Alegre) in 2003

Chomsky has been known to vigorously defend and debate his views and opinions, in philosophy, linguistics, and politics.^[5] He has had notable debates with Jean Piaget,^[101] Michel Foucault,^[102] William F. Buckley, Jr.,^[103] Christopher Hitchens,^{[104][105][106][107][108][109]} George Lakoff,^[110] Richard Perle,^[111] Hilary Putnam,^[112] Willard Quine,^[113] and Alan Dershowitz,^[114] to name a few. In response to his speaking style being criticized as boring, Chomsky said that "I'm a boring speaker and I like it that way.... I doubt that people are attracted to whatever the persona is.... People are interested in the issues, and they're interested in the issues because they are important."^[115] "We don't want to be swayed by superficial eloquence, by emotion and so on."^[116]

Influence[link]

Chomskyan models have been used as a theoretical basis in various fields of study. The Chomsky hierarchy is often taught in fundamental computer science courses as it confers insight into the various types of formal languages. This hierarchy can also be discussed in mathematical terms^[117] and has generated interest among mathematicians, particularly combinatorialists. Some arguments in evolutionary psychology are derived from his research results.^[118]

The 1984 Nobel Prize laureate in Medicine and Physiology, Niels K. Jerne, used Chomsky's generative model to explain the human immune system, equating "components of a generative grammar ... with various features of protein structures". The title of Jerne's Stockholm Nobel lecture was "The Generative Grammar of the Immune System".

Nim Chimpsky, a chimpanzee who was the subject of a study in animal language acquisition at Columbia University, was named after Chomsky in reference to his view of language acquisition as a uniquely human ability.

Famous computer scientist Donald Knuth admits to reading Syntactic Structures during his honeymoon and being greatly influenced by it. "...I must admit to taking a copy of Noam Chomsky's Syntactic Structures along with me on my honeymoon in 1961 ... Here was a marvelous thing: a mathematical theory of language in which I could use a computer programmer's intuition!".^[119]

Academic achievements, awards and honors[link]

In early 1969, he delivered the John Locke Lectures at Oxford University; in January 1970, the Bertrand Russell Memorial Lecture at University of Cambridge; in 1972, the Nehru Memorial Lecture in New Delhi; in 1977, the Huizinga Lecture in Leiden; in 1988 the Massey Lectures at the University of Toronto, titled "Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies"; in 1997, The Davie Memorial Lecture on Academic Freedom in Cape Town,^[120] and many others.^[121]

Chomsky has received many honorary degrees from universities around the world, including from the following:

He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society. In addition, he is a member of other professional and learned societies in the United States and abroad, and is a recipient of the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award of the American Psychological Association, the Kyoto Prize in Basic Sciences, the Helmholtz Medal, the Dorothy Eldridge Peacemaker Award, the 1999 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science, and others.^[125] He is twice winner of The Orwell Award, granted by The National Council of Teachers of English for "Distinguished Contributions to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language" (in 1987 and 1989).^[126]

He is a member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Department of Social Sciences.^[127]

In 2005, Chomsky received an honorary fellowship from the Literary and Historical Society.^[128] In 2007, Chomsky received The Uppsala University (Sweden) Honorary Doctor's degree in commemoration of Carolus Linnaeus.^[129] In February 2008, he received the President's Medal from the Literary and Debating Society of the National University of Ireland, Galway.^[130] Since 2009 he is an honorary member of IAPTI.^[131]

In 2010, Chomsky received the Erich Fromm Prize in Stuttgart, Germany.^[132] In April 2010, Chomsky became the third scholar to receive the University of Wisconsin's A.E. Havens Center's Award for Lifetime Contribution to Critical Scholarship.^[133]

Chomsky has an Erdős number of four.^[134]

Chomsky was voted the leading living public intellectual in The 2005 Global Intellectuals Poll conducted by the British magazine Prospect. He reacted, saying "I don't pay a lot of attention to polls".^[135] In a list compiled by the magazine New Statesman in 2006, he was voted seventh in the list of "Heroes of our time".^[136]

Actor Viggo Mortensen with avant-garde guitarist Buckethead dedicated their 2006 album, called Pandemoniumfromamerica, to Chomsky.^[137]

On January 22, 2010, a special honorary concert for Chomsky was given at Kresge Auditorium at MIT.^[138][139] The concert, attended by Chomsky and dozens of his family and friends, featured music composed by Edward Manukyan and speeches by Chomsky's colleagues, including David Pesetsky of MIT and Gennaro Chierchia, head of the linguistics department at Harvard University.

In June 2011, Chomsky was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize, which cited his "unfailing courage, critical analysis of power and promotion of human rights".^[140]

In 2011, Chomsky was inducted into IEEE Intelligent Systems' AI's Hall of Fame for the "significant contributions to the field of AI and intelligent systems".^[141][142]

Bibliography[link]

Filmography[link]

See also[link]

	Anarchism portal
	Liberalism portal
	Linguistics portal
	Mind and Brain portal
	Psychology portal
	Socialism portal

• American philosophy
• Axiom of categoricity
• Chomskybot
• "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously"
• English studies
• Knowledge worker
• List of American philosophers
• Important publications in computability
• The Anti-Chomsky Reader

References[link]