Signs of Life in the USA works in the classroom because students love to talk and write about popular culture. Signs of Life teaches students to read and write critically about pop culture by providing them with a conceptual framework known as semiotics, a field of study developed specifically for the interpretation of culture and its signs. Written by a prominent semiotician and an experienced writing instructor, the text has been extensively updated to account for the rapid evolution of contemporary trends and student interests. It features insightful themes with provocative and current reading selections that ask students to think analytically about America’s popular culture with questions such as: How have explicit and implicit signals about gender expectations affected our lives? How have television and the Internet shaped our current political climate? Signs of Life provides students with the academic language necessary to analyze the significance of our shared cultural experiences. Achieve for Readers & WritersCombining diagnostics with formative and summative assessments, Achieve for Readers & Writers is a quick, flexible solution for targeting instruction on critical reading, the writing process, grammar, mechanics, style, and punctuation to each individual student. New Achieve Writing Tools allow instructors and peer reviewers to easily comment on student writing, while fully editable writing assignments pair with powerful analytics to track student progress.