Keywords : a vocabulary of culture and society

313 Pages·2015·1.46 MB·English

by  Raymond Williams

keywords

keywords
a vocabulary of culture and society
New Edition
Raymond Williams
1
1
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© Raymond Williams 1976, 1983, 2015
First edition published in 1976 in the United States by Oxford University Press, New York
Revised edition published in 1983 in the United States
by Oxford University Press, New York.
New edition published in 2015 in the United States by Oxford University Press, New York.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Williams, Raymond.
Keywords : a vocabulary of culture and society / Raymond Williams. — new ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–0–19–939321–3 (paperback) — ISBN 978–0–19–939322–0 —
ISBN 978–0–19–939323–7 1. English language—Etymology. 2. English language—
Glossaries, vocabularies, etc. 3. Sociolinguistics. 4. Vocabulary. I. Title.
PE1580.W58 2014
423’.1—dc23
2014032351
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
9780199393213-Williams.indb 4 30/08/14 6:29 AM
for kirsti, annika, david and rosalind

Contents
Foreword
Colin MacCabe
Preface to the Second Edition
Introduction
Abbreviations
A
Aesthetic 1 Anarchism 6 Art 9
Alienation 3 Anthropology 7
B
Behaviour 11 Bourgeois 14 Bureaucracy 16
C
Capitalism 17 Commercialism 34 Conventional 43
Career 19 Common 35 Country 44
Charity 20 Communication 36 Creative 45
City 22 Communism 37 Criticism 47
Civilization 23 Community 39 Culture 49
Class 26 Consensus 40
Collective 34 Consumer 42
D
Democracy 55 Dialect 65 Dramatic 69
Determine 59 Dialectic 66
Development 63 Doctrinaire 68
E
Ecology 70 Equality 76 Experience 83
Educated 71 Ethnic 78 Expert 86
Elite 72 Evolution 78 Exploitation 86
Empirical 74 Existential 81
F
Family 87 Folk 92
Fiction 90 Formalist 93
G
Generation 96 Genetic 97 Genius 98
H
Hegemony 99 History 101 Humanity 102
I
Idealism 106 Improve 114 Intellectual 121
Ideology 107 Individual 114 Interest 123
Image 111 Industry 118 Isms 125
Imperialism 112 Institution 120
J
Jargon 126
L
Labour 127 Liberation 132
Liberal 130 Literature 134
M
Man 138 Mechanical 149 Modern 155
Management 139 Media 151 Monopoly 156
Masses 141 Mediation 152 Myth 157
Materialism 146 Medieval 155
N
Nationalist 159 Naturalism 162
Native 161 Nature 164
O
Ordinary 170 Organic 171 Originality 174
P
Peasant 175 Popular 179 Private 184
Personality 176 Positivist 181 Progressive 185
Philosophy 179 Pragmatic 182 Psychological 188
R
Racial 190 Realism 198 Revolution 209
Radical 192 Reform 202 Romantic 213
Rational 193 Regional 204
Reactionary 197 Representative 206
S
Science 215 Society 228 Structural 237
Sensibility 218 Sociology 231 Subjective 243
Sex 221 Standards 232
Socialist 223 Status 235
T
Taste 247 Theory 249
Technology 249 Tradition 252
U
Unconscious 253 Unemployment 257
Underprivileged 256 Utilitarian 259
V
Violence 261
W
Wealth 263 Western 264
Welfare 264 Work 266
References and Select Bibliography 269
Foreword
Keywords is a work without parallel in English and indeed, as far as I know,
in any other language. It marries the resources of philology to an inves-
tigation of social and political thought in a fashion that is both original
and illuminating. The philological resources are largely provided by the Oxford
English Dictionary. If philology was above all a science developed in Germany in
the nineteenth century and devoted to mapping the history of the Indo-European
languages, in England it was used in the service of a very different project. In
1857 the Philological Society called for a creation of an authoritative dictionary
of the English language. This new dictionary would draw on the developments
in philological knowledge that had demonstrated the historical interrelationship
between languages to provide both a current account of the lexicon of English and
a detailed account of the historical development of both words and meanings. The
dictionary would trace English’s growth from the Germanic language of Anglo-
Saxon through the Norman Conquest, which produced an Anglo-Latin creole
that articulated a core vocabulary of Germanic words in the syntax of Norman
French. Further developments saw huge numbers of loanwords borrowed first
from medieval French in the fourteenth century and then from Latin and Greek,
and French again, as the new learning of the Renaissance took hold. A final, more
global series of borrowing came with the establishment of the British Empire.
The project that the Philological Society announced in 1857 was brought
to completion three generations later in 1928, and it was immediately obvious
that the growth of the language meant that the endeavor would have to contin-
ue indefinitely into the future. A peculiarly English combination of the work of