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Hello and welcome to the role of media 1 lesson. This is the commentary.

I’d like to talk a little bit about Noam Chomsky in this commentary, he’s the writer of this article. There will be more, this is from a book of his, called media control by Noam Chomsky. It will talk more about the actual issues in future commentaries. But this time I just want to tell you more about Noam Chomsky, the man. Who is he?

He’s a very very interesting guy. Noam Chomsky kind of has two careers, he’s famous for two different things. Number one, he’s a famous linguist. In fact, he’s probably the most famous linguist in the world.

Now, when I say linguist, I don’t mean he speaks a lot of languages. What I mean is he studies languages. How do languages work? What is grammar exactly and how does it work? Not just in English but in all languages.

And he has a lot of very interesting theories that are very famous. One of them is called the theory of universal grammar. And that basically says that while every language has different grammar, some different grammar, that underneath there is some basic grammar, some basic language principles which are the same for all languages.

And that’s why we can learn other languages. Because they’re different, but they’re not totally different, right? So a Japanese person can learn English. Yes they’re kind of different; but really if you go deeper, there are things that are very similar and that’s why we can… people can learn other languages.

Anyway, there’s a lot more complicated theories, but the point is Noam Chomsky is a famous linguist, that’s what he first was famous for and he still is a very famous linguist, probably the most famous linguist.

When I got my master’s degree in teaching English as a foreign language, I studies Noam Chomsky, everybody does when they take a linguistics course. Okay, now he’s a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

MIT is probably the number one technology university in America. I don’t know, number one or number two. The top two are the Caltech and MIT, and he’s a professor at MIT. So, this is like the Harvard of technical school. So, science type of school. So, he’s been a professor there a long time.

Now, his second field… field number one is linguistics, but he’s also famous for politics, for political science. In fact, most people know him because of this. He’s famous all around the world for his politics and his political research.

And he’s a very interesting guy. Noam Chomsky has done a lot of research about modern democracies, especially the united states. And what he did, and continues to do, is he gets documents, official government documents from past governments in the united states.

So, he’ll get official documents for example from president Kennedy, you know, in the 60s, president Johnson from the 60s. And then going back to the 50s, and the 40s and the 30s and the 20s. It’s possible to get these documents now.

At that time in the past they were secret, no one could see them. But now, we have some laws in America that allow us to get those documents.

So, he’s gotten these documents and he’s researched, you know, what does the government really do? What does the American government really think? The people at the top, what are they really trying to do?

And he’s found out that in fact, the number one thing they do is keep control for large corporations and for people who are very very rich.

Now, that’s no surprise to me. But a lot of people think: “Oh, my God! That’s not possible! That’s not true! America is only about freedom and democracy! We’re always right, we always do the good thing!” But he’s found, in fact, that is not the main concern of the government of the United states.

But he does admit, he does say that in fact, America has a very free society. It’s true, but because we have a free society, the government has to find another way to control the people, right?

Mostly, the government doesn’t grab people and throw them in jails or shoot them and kill them, because they disagree with the government. But you know, this happens in some countries, China for example is maybe the perfect example.

So, in China if you yell something against the government on the street, the police grab you and take to prison and torture you and maybe kill you. And usually in America that does not happen, not yet. George Bush is working on it. But anyway, still mostly free.

And, so, he says that since the democratic governments especially United states can’t control with this kind of force, usually, instead, they control people with propaganda. They use, basically, mind control. They control with the media. They control people’s thoughts and ideas to make them do what they want them to do.

And he has studied these government documents and done a lot of his own research about how they do that. How do they use the media, how do they use propaganda to control the public, to control what the public thinks and what the public does and what the public will support. Very very interesting and, you know, a little scary sometimes.

But he’s not a crazy guy, you know, he’s a very intelligent guy and all of this is based on research. He’s not some, you know, crazy guy who just says oh my God the government is bad! He’s very intelligent, very careful about what he does.

And this article, the role of media 1, it comes from a book of his called media control and I will be doing more parts from this book, very interesting book.

And in fact my, you may or may not know, but my first degree is in journalism. I studied journalism as in undergraduate, I have a bachelor’s degree in journalism. And that’s when I first learned about Noam Chomsky. Because I was studying his ideas about media.

And I saw him speak, in fact. At that time, he came to my university, the university of Georgia, he came to my university in fact during the first Gulf War. George Bush’s father, right? George Bush number one. And he came and he spoke about the war. The war was getting ready to start, you know, everybody knew it was going to happen.

And he came, he was going around speaking to universities and he talked about how the American government and the media were using all this propaganda to make Americans support the war. To make them afraid of Seddam Hussain, to make them really: Yes! let’s go, let’s attack! Yes, yes, yes!

And he talked about, in very clear detail, how this was happening and that it was not an accident. The government and not only government but big business, as well, the people who, uh, the media, the companies were doing this and that it was a very effective campaign and he was right, of course. And of course they’ve done the same thing again with this second Iraq war.

But anyway, I saw him that first time speaking and I was impressed, I was like: Wow, this guy’s very intelligent, very interesting.

And then since then, I’ve read some of his books, several of his books actually. They are a little difficult, he’s an academic. He’s a, you know, PHD. So, some of his books are quite difficult, this one that I chose, this media control book that I’ll be using for lessons is not so difficult.

There might be parts that are a little tough, especially if your level is a little lower. But for the advanced students, the advanced members of effortless English, you should be able to understand it.

Also most of the chapters are going to be quite short. I’ll edit them, I’ll make them a little shorter and easier to understand. So I think the ideas are very interesting and very important.

So I want to present this to you all, and in general, I want to use interesting, thought provoking material for you to learn English. Not, you know, maybe the worst part about textbooks is that they’re irrelevant. Irrelevant means they have no use at all.

You read any English textbook, any English textbook, and you have these little fake articles, and these little fake conversations. Well, who cares? They’re not real people. They’re not real ideas. It’s all fake, so you have no reason to be curious. You have no reason to be interested in the language. It’s not important, it’s totally artificial.

So, all you do is you focus on the language itself. You spend all your time worrying about, you know, verbs and adverbs and phrasal verbs and, you know, different parts, tenses and parts of speech and etc etc. Memorizing the vocabulary, doing this fill in the blank exercise, you know, is it A or B or C?

And you get all focused and after a while, that’s what English is for a lot of students. English is stupid articles that are meaningless, stupid conversations which are not real and have no meaning between people who are not real.

And then meaningless stupid activities where you’re filling in a blank or choosing A, B, C or D. And that’s English! Well it’s not English. That is not English. English is what is used everyday in the United states and England and the world, actually, now. To communicate real ideas that are important.

And, now, they may be jokes, they may be funny ideas, they may be stories, they may be very deep philosophical ideas, they may be just basic information you need for your life, you know? How much is this? When does the train come?

But it’s real information that matters, that has some meaning to you. That’s what English is, that’s what any language is. That’s a real language. And textbooks destroy that. That’s why I hate them. I hate them!

Because they kill the language, and that’s why so many students, you know, they tell me: “Oh, I hate English! It’s so boring! Ah, why do I need it? I don’t care!” Or maybe they really do need it. They need it for something but they hate it. “Oh, English is horrible! It’s so boring!”

Well, English is not boring. The textbooks are boring, the classes are boring, the teachers are probably boring, certainly the tests are boring and the activities are boring, but English itself is not boring. It’s only because you’re reading the wrong things and listening to the wrong things. There are some really amazing ideas out there.

There are some amazing books in English. There are some amazing podcasts in English. There are amazing movies in English. There are amazing people who have great ideas who speak English. I think Noam Chomsky is one of them.

And that’s the purpose of the language. To find out this great interesting person. Wow, what are his ideas? Now, that’s… that’s language. That’s real English and that’s what I want to focus on.

Now, it might… it’s not always going to be serious. Sometimes language is funny. You know, the dear Abby letters, for example. They’re kind of funny sometimes, they’re certainly not so serious.

But you know, it’s real life. Those are real people writing those letters. Those problems are real, somewhere in America someone is having that problem. Still, it’s real. There’s a real emotion there, there are real ideas. These are real lives.

And that’s how you make English real. You’ve gotta connect with real thoughts, real emotions, real people, real lives. That’s what will help you the most. More important than how you study, more important than anything else, is connecting with the real language and the emotion and the thought and the people who speak it.

So forget everything else. If you do that, you will enjoy the language and you’ll want to learn it and everything else will happen automatically.

Alright, good enough. We’ll continue with more Noam Chomsky. He’s one of my favorite writers, one of my favorite political thinkers. So, I will be adding more Noam Chomsky ideas.

I’ll also be searching for other interesting people and interesting articles, especially for the article section. So more and more, I’ll be trying to find very interesting information for you, so you can focus on ideas instead of the language parts.

Alright, I’ll see you next time. Bye-bye.