I’ve sort of noticed that about Chomsky. As influential as he’s been. And as much respect as he gets. A lot of his reputation is based on his political and philisophical work. A lot of his broader linguistics ideas aren’t necessarily holding up, and many of his scientific claims outside of his field don’t seem to have much credibility.
It’s sort of like a Howard Zinn situation. His work doesn’t seem to be regarded as accurate by most historians. But they do consider his approach to be important, and his influence in altering how history is looked at, sourced, and interpreted is considered fairly central to how the field operates these days. With his following mostly being based on politics and in the popular sphere.
Chomsky’s base work seems to be a lot more current and credible than that. But particularly when it comes to his whole human exceptionalism, and language being biologically pre determined thing. It makes it fairly easy to massage his work to fit whatever you’d like, or use him to provide credibility to bullshit.
