Overview

Language enables us to represent our world, rendering salient the identities, groups, and categories that constitute social life. Michael Silverstein (1945–2020) was at the forefront of the study of language in culture, and this book unifies a lifetime of his conceptual innovations in a set of seminal lectures. Focusing not just on what people say but how we say it, Silverstein shows how discourse unfolds in interaction. At the same time, he reveals that discourse far exceeds discrete events, stabilizing and transforming societies, politics, and markets through chains of activity. Presenting his magisterial theoretical vision in engaging prose, Silverstein unpacks technical terms through myriad examples – from brilliant readings of Marcel Marceau's pantomime, the class-laced banter of graduate students, and the poetics/politics of wine-tasting, to Fijian gossip and US courtroom talk. He draws on forebears in linguistics and anthropology while offering his distinctive semiotic approach, redefining how we think about language and culture.

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9781009198837

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Reviews

'Brilliant, comprehensive, and always thought-provoking, Language in Culture is a truly singular contribution. Silverstein has brought his subtle and elegantly laid-out theoretical approach together with the acute and generative exploration of detailed exemplary cases - and always in his own distinctive and engaging voice. This is bound to be an immediate classic of lasting resonance.' Don Brenneis, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology Emeritus, University of California, Santa Cruz 'This treasure of a book lays out the total linguistic fact, with all of Silverstein's classic brilliance, erudition, and mischievousness.' Penelope Eckert, Albert Ray Lang Professor Emerita, Stanford University 'It's difficult to find words to characterize adequately Michael Silverstein's genius, or the significance of his work. He is a singular figure. It's tempting to think of him as a kind of Saussure for our century, except that, as this elegantly constructed volume reveals, Silverstein disassembles Saussure's framework and uses the component parts - along with myriad elements from elsewhere (Peirce, Whorf, Sapir, Jakobson, Bakhtin, and many others) - to build a wondrous new construction that allows a breathtakingly rich view of how language works and of what happens when we use it.' Michael Lucey, Sidney and Margaret Ancker Professor of Comparative Literature and French, University of California, Berkeley 'With his signature searing clarity and punning wit, Michael Silverstein at long last lays out in print what decades of students have heard - the detailed, layered, and at once remarkably robust and subtle semiotic mechanisms through which we co-construct our worlds, or wreck them, hold them in a precarious order or teeter off course.' Elizabeth A. Povinelli, Franz Boas Professor of Anthropology and Gender Studies, Columbia University

Author Information

Michael Silverstein (1945–2020) was the Charles F. Grey Distinguished Service Professor of Anthropology, Linguistics and Psychology at the University of Chicago. His groundbreaking semiotic programme was shared with hundreds of students through his Language in Culture course, which he taught for almost fifty years and is distilled in this book. Silverstein was awarded a MacArthur fellowship in 1982 and the Franz Boas Award for Exemplary Service to Anthropology in 2014. Dedicated to growing the field of linguistic anthropology, he was a president of the Society of Linguistic Anthropology, and the founding Director of the Center for the Study of Communication and Society.

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