Language connects people to each other in social relationships and allows them to participate in a variety of activities in everyday life. This original study explores the role of language in various domains of our social life, including identity, gender, class, kinship, deference, status, hierarchy, and others. Drawing on materials from over thirty languages and societies, this book shows that language is not simply a tool of social conduct but the effective means by which human beings formulate models of conduct. Models of conduct serve as points of reference for social behavior, even when actual conduct departs from them. A principled understanding of the processes whereby such models are produced and transformed in large-scale social history, and also invoked, negotiated, and departed from in smallscale social interactions provides a foundation for the cross-cultural study of human conduct.