Exploring modality in institutional interactions: Cases from academic counselling encounters

This paper explores the mutually constitutive relationship between institutional, interactive organizations and the use of language. Drawing on transcribed data from academic counselling encounters in an American university, I examine how the academic counsellors and their student clients construct (1) facts concerning the student's records as well as university requirements and (2) the role relationship between themselves through the use of modal elements in English. I argue that modality points to the social construction of knowledge systems and of the moment-by-moment relative discourse statuses between the participants in interaction. Embedding the linguistic construct of modality in the institutional as well as interactional contexts of academic counselling, I show that knowledge regarding institutional structures and constraints, institutional goals and institutional roles does not simply reside in the head of the researcher/analyst; rather, it inhabits the details of the participants’ moment-by-moment conduct. Choices in modality not only reflect that institutional knowledge but also construct and reenact that knowledge.