Michael Silverstein · Lablypedia

In a nutshell

Michael Silverstein (12 September 1945 – 17 July 2020) was an American linguist and semiotician who served as the Charles F. Grey Distinguished Service Professor of anthropology, linguistics, and psychology at the University of Chicago. He was a theoretician of semiotics and linguistic anthropology. Over the course of his career he created an original synthesis of research on the semiotics of communication, the sociology of interaction, Russian formalist literary theory, linguistic pragmatics, sociolinguistics, early anthropological linguistics and structuralist grammatical theory, together with his own theoretical contributions, yielding a comprehensive account of the semiotics of human communication and its relation to culture. He presented the developing results of this project annually from 1970 until his death in a course entitled "Language in Culture". Among other achievements, he was instrumental in introducing the semiotic terminology of Charles Sanders Peirce, including especially the notion of indexicality, into the linguistic and anthropological literature; with coining the terms metapragmatics and metasemantics in drawing attention to the central importance of metasemiotic phenomena for any understanding of language or social life; and with introducing language ideology as a field of study. His works are noted for their terminological complexity and technical difficulty.

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Academic work

Silverstein earned both his undergraduate and Ph.D. degrees at Harvard University, where he studied with the Russian linguist, semiotician and literary critic Roman Jakobson, a former member of the Prague School, and with logician and philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine. In 1982 he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in the second year of the prize's existence, and was the youngest person, at the time, to be awarded the grant. He was also a Junior Fellow of the Harvard Society of Fellows, in Anthropology.

He was a prime influence in defining 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 Sanders Peirce, and incorporating insights from structuralism, philology, history and social theory, he saw language ideologies 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 one uses polite formulae in addressing someone in a superior position).

Silverstein's work caused a theoretical and conceptual shift in anthropology, linguistics and sociolinguistics. It led to a renewed interest in the study of linguistic relativity. It 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.

He also studied the indigenous languages of Australia and the Americas, and in 2014 was awarded the Franz Boas award for Exemplary Service to Anthropology by the American Anthropological Association.

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