Language in a Cultural Sociological Perspective

In this chapter I intend briefly to reconstruct the ways in which we can consider language as a cultural resource that people use to share their social world, organize their social life, and attribute values and meanings to their experiences. In particular, I consider the familiar question of the context needed to understand the facts of language in use. In order to understand language in terms other than the internal logic of the system, I show the importance of considering language as it is concretely exercised and practiced by people in concrete situations of use. As regards what should be considered an appropriate context for the exercise of language, I present different solutions given to the issue according to different academic styles and theoretical approaches. These solutions range from considering the context as a structural array of social characteristics that affect individual behaviour in society, through seeing it as the actual situation of talking together, or as the community in which a language is spoken, or as the cognitive-institutional frame of activities, to the constraints in terms of turns and meanings imposed by the sequential development of a joint activity like a conversation. I draw some conclusions on the importance of detailed practice for the study of language in a cultural sociological perspective.