Michael Silverstein

(PhD, Harvard 1972) Charles F. Grey Distinguished Service Professor of Anthropology, of Linguistics, and of Psychology and in the Committee on Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities, studies language structure and its functional contextualization, language history and prehistory, the anthropology of language use, sociolinguistics, semiotics, language and cognition (and their development), and history of linguistic and ethnographic studies. His fieldwork in northwestern North America and northwestern Australia has been the basis of various descriptive, theoretical and generalizing contributions. He is also investigating language use and textuality as sites of contestation and transformation of cultural value in contemporary American society, reconceptualizing sociocultural and rhetorical practices in light of the semiotic anthropology of communication.