I am most interested in looking beyond the veneer of how we manoeuvre our institutional life: how we operate, the way we carry routines and decision making, what is linguistically constituted. In this context, I am drawn to investigate related vocabulary, a language we collectively recognise.
Whether company, college or public library, institutions function with underlying mechanism such as authority, hierarchy, control and a system of rules. They are continously legitimised through action and language that form part of our ‘given’ reality. Giddens (1) assessed, structure is constituted by human agency and is at the same time the medium where human actions take place. We perform actions (habits, routines etc) and make use of a language whose vocabulary maintains and reinforces institutions; whether intentionally or not. As Deetz (2) placed it: ‘Language is regarded as constitutive for institutions’.
My current daily routine is working through (many) Business and Management books. Injected with humour, I filter phrases that carry statements, comments or rules that have been used to communicate. By de-contextualising the terms, I intend to present them one-by-one; random samples of vocabulary that form or reflect our actions. In fact, not only in the wider world of work but in the everyday.
Here is edit #3
They are not involved.
Behaviour is behaviour.
Maybe it’s nothing.
The trick, therefore, is to connect.
Call it method.
You, too, can write.
Cash in and run.
Heroes are in great demand.
It’s not a matter of size.
There is no time for safety.
We are the solution.
It’s all very impressive.
Something is always lost.
(1) Giddens (1979) Central Problems in Social Theory, University of California Press, pp. 69-70 (2) Deetz (1973) Words Without Things: Towards a Social Phenomenology of Language”, QJS, 59 (Feb) pp. 40-51
