TOWARD ETHNOGRAPHIES OF INSTITUTIONAL DISCOURSE

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Abstract
The article describes the ethnography of institutional discourse perspective. Institutional discourses are made up of the assumptions, concerns, and vocabularies of members of socially organized settings, and the ways in which they interact. The perspective is an analytic framework and research program that combines ethnographers' concern for in-depth observations of everyday life with aspects of ethnomethodology, conversation analysis, and Foucauldian discourse studies. The perspective focuses on the ways in which setting members use discursive resources in organizing their practical actions, and how members' actions are constrained by the resources available in settings. The perspective is developed by considering how institutional discourses and settings are reflexively linked, institutions are organized as situated conventions, and institutional discourses involve talk and interpretation and are dispersed within and across settings.