ABSTRACT
Practice theories have brought much attention to the organised action nexuses where social life plays out. They have said relatively little, however, about language as an element of these nexuses. Pierre Bourdieu (1991) connected language to symbolic power, Andreas Reckwitz (2006, 2008) conceptualises the social as a network of practice-discourse complexes and William Hanks (1996) incorporates close attention to unfolding practice into a general account of language in human life. This is insufficient attention, however, for a phenomenon that some theorists have treated as constituting or instituting an abstract structure that pervades human existence – and that on any account is central to social life. The current chapter aims to work toward rectifying this deficit. Its central question is: What might practice theory say about sayings, texts and discourses? How can these phenomena be brought into accounts of a practice theoretical persuasion and be made part of their social analyses?
