"Bringing together research from both sociolinguistics and semantics, this pioneering book presents a new framework for studying the relation between language, ideologies and the social world. It is essential reading for sociolinguists interested in meaning, and semanticists and philosophers interested in language in its social context"--

Heather Burnett is a Senior Research Scientist at Le Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS), France. Notable publications include Gradability in Natural Language (2016).

1. A formal semantics for social meaning; 2. Formalizing the third wave; 3. Testing sociolinguistic theories using game-theoretic pragmatics; 4. A materialist semantics for slurs and identity terms; 5. Socially driven language change in game-theoretic pragmatics; Conclusion.