Michael Silverstein.html
 
| ca | de | en | es | fr | it | nl | no | pl | pt | ru | ro | fi | sv | tr | vo |


 

Michael Silverstein (born 1945) is a professor of anthropology, linguistics, and psychology at the University of Chicago. He has studied Indigenous Australian languages and Indigenous American languages. He earned his undergraduate degree at Brown University and his PhD at Harvard University, studying with famed semiotician Roman Jakobson, formerly active in the Prague School of linguistics/semiotics. Jakobson was also a formative influence on anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss. In 1982 he won was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in the second year of the prize's existence. He was also a Junior Fellow of the Harvard Society of Fellows, in Anthropology.

Silverstein's research focuses on linguistic pragmatics, linguistic anthropology, sociolinguistics, indexicality, metapragmatics, and language ideology.

He is particularly credited with the development of 'language ideologies' as a field of study. Language ideologies are socially grounded beliefs and conceptualisations of language, its functions and its users. Based on work of Benjamin Lee Whorf and Charles Peirce, and incorporating insights from structuralism, philology, history and social theory, 'language ideologies' are seen as patterns that guide speakers' use of language and so, eventually, change that language. We talk on the basis of what we believe we can do with and in language, and by doing that we shape our language. Thus, language ideologies form the bridge between language patterns and social and cultural structure, as the socially grounded beliefs in what language is and does convert into particular patterns of use that are understandable, precisely because they fit these beliefs and the expectations they generate. The connections between usage and beliefs are empirically identifiable as 'metapragmatics' - the articulation of beliefs about language use in language use (as when we use polite formulae in addressing someone in a superior position).

Silverstein's work has caused a theoretical and conceptual shift in anthropology, linguistics and sociolinguistics. It has led to a renewed interest in the work of Whorf, Sapir and others. It has also added another perspective of critique of 'Chomskyan' conceptions of language and it has boosted a critical and politically sensitive trend in the study of language in society, influencing notably the study of language policy, language planning, and language in education.

Publications

  • 1976 "Hierarchy of Features and Ergativity". Grammatical Categories in Australian Languages. 112–171.
  • 1981 "Case-marking and the Nature of Language". Australian Journal of Linguistics. 227-244.
  • 1996 Natural Histories of Discourse (editor, with Greg Urban). Chicago: University of Chicago Press (includes chapter, "The Secret Life of Texts," pp. 81-105). ISBN 0822334747.
  • 1998 "The Improvisational Performance of Culture in Realtime Discursive Practice". In K. Sawyer, ed., Creativity in Performance. Greenwich, CT: Ablex Publishing Corp., pp. 265-312.
  • 2003 Talking Politics: The substance of style from Abe to “W”. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press. ISBN 0971757550.
  • 2004 "'Cultural' Concepts and the Language-Culture Nexus". Current Anthropology. 45(5): 621-652.
  • 2005 "Languages/Cultures are Dead! Long Live the Linguistic-Cultural!" In D. Segal & S. Yanagisako, eds., Unwrapping the Sacred Bundle: Reflections on the Disciplining of Anthropology. Durham: Duke University Press, 99-125. ISBN 0822334747.


External links

 This article on a linguist is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
All Right Reserved © 2007, Designed by Stylish Blog.