ABSTRACT
When general issues of language and discourse 1 have been treated within the language sciences, including linguistics and sociolinguistics, it has become a commonplace that discourse is discussed in terms of dynamic processes and situated construction. Languages, on the other hand, have traditionally been seen in terms of stable, supraindividual systems of units and rules. Yet the relationships between structure and agency are moot points in sociology and sociolinguistics (Carter and Sealey 2000); language as a system is arguably also subject to dynamic variation and change, and there is structure and stability also in action and in discourse across communicative events. It is therefore too simplistic to claim that, in the realm of language and discourse, language equals stability and discourse equals dynamics, even if this view has been attributed to many linguistic thinkers, for example, Saussure (1964 [1916]; cf. Lähteenmäki 1998).
