[Linganth] from University of Chicago -- Sad News about Michael Silverstein

[Ilana Gershon]

Prof. Michael Silverstein, a leading University of Chicago 
anthropologist who made groundbreaking contributions to linguistic 
anthropology and helped define the field of sociolinguistics, died July 
17 in Chicago following a battle with brain cancer. He was 74.

The Charles F. Grey Distinguished Service Professor of Anthropology, 
Linguistics and Psychology, Silverstein was known for his highly 
influential research on language-in-use as a social and cultural 
practice and for his long-term fieldwork on Native language speakers of 
the Pacific Northwest and of Aboriginal Australia. Most recently, 
Silverstein examined the effects of globalization, nationalism and other 
social forces on local speech communities.

“Over a half-century at the University of Chicago, he produced a body of 
work that fundamentally changed the place of linguistics in the field, 
with foundational contributions to the understanding of language 
structure, sociolinguistics and semiotics, as well as the history of 
linguistics and anthropology,” said Prof. Joe Masco, chair of the 
Department of Anthropology. “His erudition, sense of humor, love of 
scholarship, of teaching, of conversation and substantive debate is 
legendary and helped establish the intellectual strength of UChicago in 
all the many different fields of which he was part.”

Born Sept. 12, 1945, in Brooklyn, New York, Silverstein earned his 
bachelor’s degree and doctorate from Harvard University. He came to the 
University of Chicago as a visiting assistant professor in 1970 to teach 
the Language in Culture introductory course. He formally joined the 
Department of Anthropology in 1971 as an associate professor and was 
promoted to professor in 1978.

“Language in Culture, which he taught continuously from 1970-2020, 
offered generations of students in multiple fields—Anthropology, 
Psychology, Linguistics, Human Development, among others—a Rosetta Stone 
to interpret a 2,000-year history of ideas about the relationship 
between language, culture and social interaction,” said Robert Moore, 
PhD’00, a former student who now teaches at the University of 
Pennsylvania. “It inspired numerous books and reshaped the humanistic 
fields concerned with speech as a form of social action. Students who 
went on to become philosophers, sociologists, anthropologists and social 
activists all drew primary inspiration from this course.”

A prolific writer of essays, articles and reviews, Silverstein’s books 
included Whitney on Language, Natural Histories of Discourse (with Greg 
Urban), Talking Politics and Creatures of Politics: Media, Message and 
the American Presidency (with Michael Lempert). He was active in 
professional service across UChicago, including as a member of the 
Social and Behavioral Sciences Institutional Review Board for Research 
with Human Subjects from 1997-2000 and 2001-2005. He served as board 
chair from 2005-2012.

“His erudition, sense of humor, love of scholarship, of teaching, of 
conversation and substantive debate is legendary.”

—Prof. Joe Masco

In 2019, Silverstein gave the Nora and Edward Ryerson Lecture 
<https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ylwNisalLT8>—a recognition of his lasting 
contribution to the intellectual life of the University of Chicago.

“What he strove to understand, and what he clarified in groundbreaking 
ways, was a systematic way to understand what fundamentally makes human 
societies function: communication in all its guises,” said Assoc. Prof. 
Constantine Nakassis. “He did so with incisive observation, brilliant 
analysis and with his unique wit. His ideas are, quite literally, the 
very language through which the social study of discourse is thought.

“But what I will remember most of Michael was how generous he was. He 
built worlds—institutional worlds, scholarly worlds, intellectual 
worlds—and he invited you to participate in them, grow them, and make 
them your own. In doing so, he lifted us up.”

He served on the editorial boards of American Anthropologist, Law and 
Social Inquiry, Ethnos, Functions of Language and the Journal of 
Linguistic Anthropology among others. Silverstein was also a member of 
seven professional societies, including serving as the founding vice 
president and then president of the Society of Linguistic Anthropology.

Silverstein was named a MacArthur Fellow in 1982. He held a Guggenheim 
Fellowship in 1979, was elected to the American Academy of Arts and 
Sciences in 1991, and to the American Philosophical Society in 2008. In 
2016, he was interviewed for APS’s “Talking About Things 
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aait7E06q1I>” series, discussing one of 
the journals of explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. In 2014, 
he received the Franz Boas Award for Exemplary Service to Anthropology; 
in giving him its highest award, the American Anthropology Association 
described Silverstein as “a virtual force of nature in the discipline.”

https://news.uchicago.edu/story/michael-silverstein-groundbreaking-anthropologist-and-linguist-1945-2020

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