Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society is a book by the Welsh Marxist academic Raymond Williams published in 1976 by Croom Helm.
Originally intended to be published along with the author's 1958 work Culture and Society, this work examines the history of more than a hundred words that are familiar and yet confusing: Art; Bureaucracy; Culture; Educated; Management; Masses; Nature; Originality; Radical; Society; Welfare; Work; and many others.
The approach is cultural rather than etymological. Sometimes the origins of a word cast light on its meaning, but often one finds that it originally meant something quite different. Or that there has been a fierce political struggle over the 'correct' meaning.
A revised and expanded edition of Keywords was published by Fontana in 1983. In 2005 Blackwell published New Keywords: A Revised Vocabulary of Culture and Society, an attempt to update Williams' text.
Read more about Keywords: A Vocabulary Of Culture And Society: Excerpts
Famous quotes containing the words vocabulary, culture and/or society:
“A new talker will often call her caregiver “mommy,” which makes parents worry that the child is confused about who is who. She isn’t. This is a case of limited vocabulary rather than mixed-up identities. When a child has only one word for the female person who takes care of her, calling both of them “mommy” is understandable.”
—Amy Laura Dombro (20th century)
“The purpose of education is to keep a culture from being drowned in senseless repetitions, each of which claims to offer a new insight.”
—Harold Rosenberg (1906–1978)
“In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)