Michael Silverstein

Michael Silverstein's theoretical contributions to anthropology, linguistics and psychology range from modeling the flow of communicated meanings during verbal interaction to the role of language as a medium and symbol of cultural ideologies. These contributions grow out of his long-term studies of the indigenous languages and cultures of North America and of Australia, and of the contemporary sociocultural forces on American English, which he has been studying in the framework of linguistic anthropology. In addition to his own widely published technical papers, Silverstein, along with his students and other collaborators, has published a series of works based on his research, including Natural Histories of Discourse, published by the University of Chicago Press in 1996.