attached to different textual performances in different contexts, as part of
that practice. The book does this in the process of teaching that
communication is much more complex than language or verbal text
alone.

Communication and Cultural Literacy does not build disciplinary or
anti-disciplinary fences within the interdisciplinary space of cultural
studies. It allows semiotics, textual studies and philosophy, social and
critical theory to talk to one another and shows how useful it might be
to let them. It makes it clear throughout that men and women do cultural
studies and that men and women, of all kinds, need to be addressed by
cultural studies. That, it seems to me, is an important place to begin.
Beyond that beginning, an introduction to the field which reaffirms the
importance of communication and cultural literacy in cultural studies is
what this book seeks to provide. This second edition of the book has
been rewritten to provide the most up-to-date accounts of recent devel-
opments in the three areas of spoken, written and visual communication
which are its primary focus, and to make the book relevant to an
international audience in a global context. It will be extremely valuable
as a text wherever issues of cultural value, communication, cultural
capital and cultural literacy are on the teaching agenda, and it offers, in
accessible and challenging ways, the tools that are needed to understand
and to engage with current debates.

Terry Threadgold

Halliday M. A.K. 1978 Language as Social Semiotic: The Social Interpretation
of Language and Meaning, Edward Arnold, London

Morris M. & Muecke S. 1995 'Editorial' The UTS Review 1 ( 1): 1-4

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