[Linganth] NEW BOOK: M. Silverstein, Language in Culture book out now

[Constantine Nakassis]

Dear all,

Michael Silverstein's
<https://www.cambridge.org/highereducation/books/language-in-culture/3D4F3FF1DE52DC7CDC5A5B34D21B8AF1#overview>*Language
in Culture: Lectures on the Social Semiotics of Language
<https://www.cambridge.org/highereducation/books/language-in-culture/3D4F3FF1DE52DC7CDC5A5B34D21B8AF1#overview>
*is now available, published by Cambridge University Press. The book is
based on his 2017 LSA lectures, a condensed version of his legendary
Language in Culture course, which he taught nearly every year from 1970
until his death in 2020.

*Description*
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.

*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
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