Keywords

By: Raymond Williams

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Paperback | 1 May 1988

At a Glance

Paperback
350 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
19.7 x 12.9 x 2.0

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Keywords is a unique exploration of the actual language of cultural transformation. Neither a defining dictionary nor a specialist glossary, Keywords is the record of an inquiry into a vocabulary: a shared body of words and meanings concerned with the practices and institutions described as 'culture' and 'society'. In a series of connecting essays, Raymond Williams investigates how these 'keywords' have been formed, altered, redefined, influenced, modified, confused and reinforced as the historical contexts in which they were applied changed to give us their current meaning and significance. This edition includes the essays on twenty-one extra words which Raymond Williams added to his original text when revising it to take account of fresh research and changes in nuance.

Industry Reviews

`A revelatory unpacking of the complicated disputes that lay - dormant, as it were - within familiar words' Guardian

`Williams's essential point about the social and political stakes in simple words and phrases is as true today as it was in the 1970s: think of the many battles that have erupted around terms like "liberal," "torture," "pro-life" or "intelligent design"' New York Times

`This book is an erudite, elegant, and awful warning to anybody tempted to lay down the lexicographical law, in order to apply one authoritative fixed sense to a highly variable and controversial value word' The Times

`Keywords is useful and stimulating to all who work with words or merely love them' Wall Street Journal

`The book's greatest value, perhaps, is its exemplification of how all of us should respond to the words we hear and use: with surprise, distrust, curiosity, and unflagging vigilance' Yale Review

`An invaluable book ... A unique coda to the words of one of our most original and provocative thinkers' Harpers

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