ABSTRACT
This chapter takes up a number of different approaches to understanding political and social concepts and the multiple functions perform in political debates. The study of conceptual change is a central part of the study of political phenomena and cannot be easily separated from the study of political action. There are many signs by which the student of language can witness actors employing, or neglecting, concepts. The work of the German social historian Reinhart Koselleck and the practice of Begriffsgeschichte that he has done so much to found are not as familiar to most non-German-reading audiences as the historical research undertaken by the Cambridge School. The analysis of conceptual contestation and innovation as practiced by Cambridge School scholars presupposed the text as a written or verbalized utterance, a speech act by which each author may be conceived of as an agent who uses language as a resource and who intends his or her actions to become an event.
