So begins this headline from the University Observer Online (Dublin). Well, yeah, Chomsky's famed for sure, and he's an anarchist. And he's a famed anarchist, though that's not the first characterization many of us would reach for, even in a political context.Seeing the headline set me to wondering: Who is the prototypical "famed anarchist"? Google, and you can some hits on Koroptkin, Lucy Parsons, Gertie Voss, and other historical figures you may know. By far and away the most hits are for the person in the picture (click to enlarge): Emma Goldman.
Image from here.
4 comments:
Kropotkin, Goldman, and Goodman come to my mind at once.
There's an assumed relationship between the modifier and the first noun that isn't there, really. We don't expect them both to be modifying the second noun. That's clever.
Dishonest, but clever.
Well, then there's Choam Nomsky, that brilliant political thinker with such crackpot notions about linguistics...
JJM
In that article's body, the phrase "considered an intellectual figurehead" gives even more flavor of ESL-writing. Unless there's a meaning of "figurehead" that I hadn't appreciated.
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