Discourse in Institutions

CARRANZA, ISOLDA E.

The Routledge Handbook of Hispanic Applied Linguistics

Routledge

Lugar: Nueva York; Año: 2015; p. 477 - 494

This chapter is on the connections between social structure and human agency, with the reminder that there are relatively stable intermediate levels such as social practices, which allow for highly productive insights and articulation with other approaches to communication (e.g. cognitive, ethnographic, socio-political, policy planning, etc.). Focusing more on discourse in institutions than on institutional discourse, this chapter reviews and critiques some antecedents that are relevant to research on institutions, then, it deals with three traditional areas of state institutional organization. The section Perspectives for the Future points to research strands such as institutional work, values, ideologies, contradictions and reflexive signalling of institutional discourse. The concluding section warns against reducing all aspects of social, economic and material reality to discourse and remarks on contemporary individuals-State relations.