A Multidisciplinary Review: Words, Culture, Education, and Society

Abstract

This chapter is a synthesis, from relevant disciplines, of evidence and assumptions about the intricate links between words, culture, education, and society. In trying to give the interdisciplinary background to the study, I acknowledge that a discussion without disciplinary framework may be difficult, integrating as it does many rival discourses. But I agree with W.V.O. Quine (1966) that disciplines are mainly useful for deans and librarians, and that efforts to integrate rival frameworks are likely to increase the fruitfulness of the discussion. This is especially so in an area like the study of vocabulary, which inevitably overflows even the tightest of disciplinary boundaries. So my separation of this chapter into topics and ‘disciplines’ is in many places a rather arbitrary one. It is often used mainly to break up the text.