ABSTRACT
Social institutions and institutional practices have come to the fore as central topics of research for social scientists in recent decades. This is hardly surprising, since institutions play a central role in the production and maintenance of social order, and, for instance, in the allocation of services and resources to citizens. The position that the institutionality of talk can be derived from the words on the page has consequences at many levels. The local accomplishment of talk is therefore also the accomplishment of a certain moral order. The traditions of argumentation seem to work as living constitutive possibilities that enable the participants in a complex society to argue in situated practices. An institutional category in this perspective is thus characterized by a double dialogicity: it is 'dialogical' both in the contexts of in situ interaction and within the sociocultural practices established over long traditions of indulging in such interactions.
