Abstract

This paper is aimed to provide a review about the studies on how people practice their agency

in various types of discourse and to suggest the possible directions for future research. The

paper begins with the introduction to different conceptualizations of human agency in

philosophy and sociology. Next, it reviews how human agency has been explored in written

discourses like textbooks, news stories and novels, as well as in spoken discourses including

conversations and oral narratives. Then, it highlights the relationship between agency and

systemic functional linguistics, as the latter has been effectively applied to analyzing human

agency in discourse. The review shows that studies on discursive practice of agency have

demonstrated the following features. First, human agency has been studied in various types of

discourse with methodological biases. Second, the majority of the studies take a relatively

static view towards agency within a particular discourse. Third, most of the studies are

qualitative analysis to selected individual sentences or utterances. At the end of the paper,

suggestions are given for further research based on the research gaps identified.