Language enables us to represent our world, rendering salient the identities, groups, and categories that constitute social life. Michael Silverstein (19452020) 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 buthowwe say it, Silverstein shows how discourse unfolds in interaction. At the same time, he reveals that discoursefar 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\’spantomime, the class-laced banter of graduate students, and the poetics/politics of wine-tasting, to Fijian gossip and US courtroom talk. He draws on forebearsin linguistics and anthropology while offering his distinctive semiotic approach, redefininghow we think about language and culture.

• Presents each technical development with its historical background, definition and empirical exemplifications of concepts, allowing the reader to develop a broad contextual understanding
• Readers are engaged by a wide range of examples from current cultural practices, enabling them to connect the theory to contemporary everyday life
• Both instructors and students are supported by a series of PowerPoint slides for each chapter, illustrating the theoretical points with charts and pictures