The agency of language in institutional talk

Abstract

This article, introducing the Special Issue, investigates the notion of “agency of language” and its historical roots: the phenomenological emphasis on the social actors’ role in constituting their Life-World. It reconstructs the genesis – at the beginning of the 20th century – of two ideas that still nourish contemporary interactional and pragmatic views of language: language meaning relies on use, language is a tool to perform activities. Focusing on dialogue in institutional settings, it illustrates how cultures, social orders, and moral horizons are talked-into-being and shaped through the activities performed in institutional talk. It also presents the contributions in the Special Issue that address the co-constitutive relationship between language, interaction, and culture from different disciplinary perspectives as well as methodological approaches.