ABSTRACT
Loenhoff suggests that all interpretation of speech and verbalization of practice should be conceived of as a form of linguistic action, and thus as representing an independent source of social differentiation. Linguistic knowledge is a highly significant part of the stock of social knowledge. Loenhoff argues that language has either been reduced to a neutral medium or is considered only in its function as an instrument for attaining power and distinction. Nowadays, the communicative turn within the sociology of knowledge has relegated the reconstruction of linguistic knowledge to an inferior rank. In The Social Construction of Reality (1966/1967), Berger and Luckmann embarked on the sociological situating of language. In line with Alfred Schütz, they understood language as a “social-historical a priori,” as the most important objectification of subjective experience, on the one hand, and as a sediment of knowledge, on the other. They made it clear that language was not a phenomenon of consciousness but rather a social institution. The symmetry between subjective and objective reality depends to a large extent on language. Speech and understanding is underpinned and guided by implicit linguistic knowledge and by explications and linguistic objectifications that have emerged from communication.
