Keywords

First published in 1976, Keywords is neither a defining dictionary, nor a specialist glossary. It 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. Keywords extends Raymond Williams' previous work to study the actual language of cultural transformation.