ABSTRACT
Chapter 7 is based on the idea that the on-going construction of social realities and selves is embedded in dialogical practices. The chapter gives a step-by-step description of how these practices can be analysed as an approach to studying in-situ language use and social meaning construction. The inquiry described in this chapter is a longitudinal study of an IT system’s implementation from a relational constructionist perspective. The study followed key organisation members and focused on how they made sense of the implementation process. The chapter elaborates how studying processes of language use from within the local ‘somewhere’ of the organisational members enables an analysis of the on-going processes of relational construction. The chapter describes how to analyse both the constitutive and constituting forces of language use in organisational life. Examples from the study illustrate how analysing the on-going processes of meaning, identity and legitimacy construction illuminates the ways organisational everyday life is formed.
