The agency of language in institutional talk: An introduction

This article, introducing the special issue, focuses on the “agency of language” as the backbone of any dialogic view of language and the core dimension of institutional talk. In the first decades of the 20th century, two ideas – that would shake any simplistic view of language – surfaced: language meaning relies on use and language is a tool to perform activities. Like an underground river, these ideas resurfaced in the second half of the century and nourished the interactional and pragmatic views of language that inform contemporary approaches to the study of the relationship between language, interaction, and culture. This paper is aimed at outlining the roots of the notion of “agency of language”, i.e. the phenomenological emphasis on the social actors’ agency in constituting their Life-World, and its development as a foundational concept in language and social interaction studies. Focusing on the core topic of this special issue – dialogue in institutional settings – it particularly illustrates how crucial it is to reflect on the ways cultures, social orders, and moral horizons are talked-into-being and shaped through the activities performed in institutional talk. It also presents the articles in this Special Issue that address this topic from different disciplinary perspectives as well as methodological approaches.