Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society

As always, in disentangling the meaning of terms and concepts that are often taken for granted, Williams hopes to problematize our understandings of meaning. He insists that his is not a project, in fact, about meaning. Rather, it is about meanings (plural), which -- when unpacked and made visible -- do not bring about resolution but "just that extra edge of consciousness" (p.24). At its most basic level, that is exactly what this book is -- simultaneously and meditation and enumeration of the evolving contingencies of language that encourages us to see the connection between words and ideology.