This paper focuses on the study of social institutions from the angle of pragmatics, not so much because this is necessarily the best or the only way to study them, but rather because researchers have indicated the need for a close pragmatic analysis of verbal interaction in institutional settings without going very far towards carrying it out (e.g. Sarangi & Slembrouck 1996; Fairclough 1992, 1993; Fowler et al. 1979; Redish 1983; Wilson 1990). A thorough micro-analysis of socio-communicative verbal interaction within institutional settings must involve various approaches to the study of the generation and negotiation of meaning, i.e. it must involve various types of linguistic pragmatics. However, when seriously considering theories of sociology such as social constructivism and social reproduction, a micro-analysis of verbal interaction will ultimately lead to a reshuffling of what constitutes a social institution. Taking the argument to its logical conclusion one might then say that all verbal interaction is inherently institutional. For reasons of space, this paper first outlines only one of the clearest statements within the framework of social constructivism of what characterizes a social institution, viz. That provided by Berger & Luckmann (1991), then broadening the scope of sociological enquiry by bringing in ideas of social reproduction and symbolic resources posited by Bourdieu and his associates to show how a micro-level analysis of institutional discourse of the kind that Sarangi & Slembrouck (1996) aim at reveals discourse features which are also to be found in the discourse of individual families. One research goal that thus emerges for pragmaticists and discourse analysts is to consider these forms of discourse as also being fundamentally institutional.