I’ve been planning a new post for this blog for a few months now. I previously wrote a post about all of the parts of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s philosophy that interest me, and I was originally thinking of doing a similar post on the work of Noam Chomsky, but after doing a bit of research I quickly realised that Noam’s important ideas on language are not going to be easily or sensibly summarised in a brief blog post. Chomsky, as most of you undoubtedly know, is the most influential linguist alive. He has been working in the field since the 50s, and he has covered a lot of ground. Instead of attempting a summary of his work, I’m going to focus on one of his ideas and how it relates to my work as a language teacher. I will preface this post by claiming that most of what I know about Chomsky’s work comes from lectures I watched on youtube. It’s possible that some of the ideas discussed in this post are actually those of other individuals that Chomsky referenced in his own lectures. The failure to provide references is mine, not Chomsky’s.

Chomsky’s most famous idea is probably Universal Grammar. This is essentially the belief that the ability to use language is part of our genetic make-up. Prior to Chomsky proposing this idea, the prevalent view was that language was learned through a process of trial and error – a kid would watch their parents point at things and try to reproduce the corresponding utterances. Chomsky pointed out that this behaviorist view of language can’t explain the fact that most sentences that are spoken are spoken for the first time – the ‘point and repeat’ model of language acquisition can’t account for the infinite variety of sentences that can be produced. (If this behaviorist view was correct, it would in theory be possible to teach language to an intelligent animal.) Chomsky proposed that a language faculty is innate, and all the language learner has to learn are the arbitrary sounds that we use for words and the different linear structures (the order of words) that different languages use to produce sentences. He argues that aside from these superficial differences, all languages are essentially the same. This is a crude summary, but I’m pretty confident that’s the general idea.

This concept has been knocking about for a long time now, and I know that loads of people have criticized it and pointed out problems, but in my mind it still seems pretty sensible, especially in comparison to the alternatives I’ve seen proposed. The refutations that I’ve understood seem to attack the wording of the current form of the theory rather than the central idea behind it. I don’t have the background to refute or defend it properly. Right now, I’m more interested in considering the consequences that the theory of Universal Grammar has for a language teacher.

For me, the most consequential idea that comes from the concept of Universal Grammar is the notion that language is not really something that is learned but something that grows. Like the faculty of sight, the language faculty is innate and develops along with the rest of the organism. It follows that language is not something that can be ‘taught’ in the traditional sense of that word. Small children pick language up with very little instruction. I am the parent of a two year old, and I can testify to the truth of this statement. When I think of the word ‘teach’ or of the traditional role of a teacher, I imagine a one-way transfer of ideas – a teacher takes what they know about a topic and tries to copy this information into the heads of their student, but this can’t be done in the case of language. As already mentioned, most sentences have never been spoken before, and a teacher can not possibly put into another’s head what does not yet exist in their own.

As a language teacher, I need to consider this idea carefully. If language can’t be taught or learned, should I just throw in the towel? It sounds discouraging, but on closer analysis, it doesn’t really change that much.

This Chomskyian view by no means negates the need for instruction for learners of a second (or third or fourth…) language. If it’s true that the only differences between language are vocabulary and sentence structures, as Chomsky’s model suggests, it seems likely that learners of a second language would greatly benefit from explicitly learning the rules of a new language. When Chomsky says that language isn’t learned, I don’t think he’s speaking about specific languages but rather the more foundational ability to use language.

One sensible consequence of the fact that the teaching of language does not involve the copying of information from one person’s head to another’s is that every person must then speak their own unique language. The languages of two neighbours or siblings are similar enough to communicate clearly, but these languages will, by their nature, be slightly different. Noam has me convinced that this is a natural consequence of any serious consideration of what language means. I speak English fluently, but my English is very different to the fluent English of somebody living in the Southern US. Indeed, the flow of communication between a speaker of Punjabi from Jalandhar and a speaker of Hindi from Delhi might flow more smoothly than the verbal communication between a speaker of English from Scotland and another from Zimbabwe. Chomsky pushes this idea to another level and points to studies that have shown that the way language is structured suggests that it is primarily a means of organizing thoughts rather than a means of communication. This makes the concept of ‘teaching’ a language even more daunting. Teaching a person to communicate seems tricky enough, but how can I possibly ‘teach’ a person how to organise their thoughts?

I don’t know exactly how Chomsky would respond to this question, but I reckon the correct answer is “through an extended process of immersion, understandable instruction and practice.” I don’t think that directly studying Chomsky has changed much about the way that I’ll do my job, but that’s probably because his ideas have already had a big influence on the way I was taught to teach language. I think Noam is a real cool guy, and I’m sure I’ll come back to his work in the future.

A note regarding my sources:
Over the course of the last few months, I have been downloading lectures Noam gave off of youtube and listening to them as I walk to work or make dinner. The content of these talks was largely similar. I haven’t kept a record of the exact videos, but you can find all of them by using the search term “Chomsky Language”. The only written texts that I consulted for this article were an essay called “Overview of Language Teaching Methods and Approaches” by Marianne Celce-Murcia in the 4th edition of Teaching English as Second Language edited by Celce-Murcia, Brinton and Snow and Introducing Chomsky by John Maher. I’ve read a few of the Introducing series (Wittgenstein, Joyce, Sartre, Islam, and Freud) and most of them are pretty good, but I found the Chomsky one overly technical for an introduction.