The chapters in this book originated as open lectures and each reflects the occasion on which it was presented. The three chapters are: "Grammar, Society, and the Noun"; "The Context of Linguistics"; and "Ideas about Language." Chapters 1 and 3 were given as inaugural lectures that celebrated the foundation of new departments of linguistics. Chapter 2 was given at a roundtable discussion and relates to the particular stage of development of the study of linguistics in the United States at that time. Chapter 1 addresses language from the outside, with the focus on language in the social environment. It concludes that language cannot be interpreted without consideration of its place in the future of human society. Chapter 2 addresses the existence of linguistics as a field and a theory; it also highlights the social context of language and its future social accountability. Chapter 3 offers a brief history of the field of linguistics and suggests that a semiotic perspective enables one to see language in the context of the social construction of reality where each language has its own logic, rhetoric, and esthetics. (Contains 89 references.) (NAV)