Language contextualized as social action and as a medium of cultural knowledge and value.  The semiotics of 'interaction ritual' (Goffman): How "what one says" projects as "what one comes to have done" in discursive interaction.  Denotation and the pragmatics of language: indexicality in the entextualization/contextualization process.  The specifically socio-cultural component of "knowledge of language" and the sociolinguistic division of denotational labor.  Heteroglossia (Bakhtin) and language variation: semiotic processes of enregisterment in relation to sociolinguistic variation.  Cultural politics of language and of linguistics.