Recent developments in linguistic methodology as well as in related fields make it appear increasingly urgent to re-examine the conditions of language, linguistic activity, and communication in general. One way to evaluate how appropriately a scientific or scholarly theory reflects these conditions is to scrutinize its terminology as related to the notions it is supposed to describe. This paper examines the term situation by way of reconstructing its etymological and conceptual development throughout its history. Based on this, we discuss possibilities of conceptualizing ‚situationality‘, central not just to linguistic thought, as a dialectical notion. We consequently propose to make full use of the term’s semantic potential, which allows to accurately approach the conditioned-ness of language (and other cultural entities) as both social structure and social process at the same time.