Rhetoric of derisive laughter in political debates on the EU

This article focuses on the argumentative role of derisive laughter in broadcast political debates. Using Discursive Psychology (DP) we analyze how politicians use derisive laughter as an argumentative resource in multiparty interactions, in the form of debates about the U.K. and the European Union. Specifically, we explore how both pro- and anti-EU politicians use derisive laughter to manage issues of who-knows-what and who-knows-better. We demonstrate the uses of derisive laughter by focusing on 2 discrete, yet pervasive, interactional phenomena in our data—extended laughter sequences and snorts. We argue that in the context of political debates derisive laughter does more than signal trouble and communicate contempt; it is, more than often, mobilized in the service of ideological argumentation and used as a form of challenge to factual claims. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved

The nation in context: how intergroup relations shape the discursive construction of identity continuity and discontinuity

The perceived collective continuity (PCC) of a national identity serves as a crucial source of stability and self‐esteem for group members. Recent work has explored the consequences of perceived continuity when the meaning of a nation’s past is seen in a negative light, and the challenges this brings for the negotiation of a positive identity in the present, signalling the potential value of perceived discontinuity The current paper extends this literature by examining the role of intergroup relations in the construction of both collective continuities and discontinuities. Through analysing the discursive management of national identity in nine focus groups in a post‐conflict context (Serbia, N = 67), we reveal how the tensions between continuity and discontinuity are embedded within a broader discussion of the nation’s relationship with relevant national outgroups across its history. The findings contribute to theoretical knowledge on the interlinking of national identity and PCC by illustrating the ways in which intergroup relations of the past shape the extent to which continuity is seen as desirable or undesirable. We argue that despite the psychological merits of collective continuity, discontinuity can become attractive and useful when there is limited space to challenge how a nation’s history is remembered and the valence given to the past. The paper concludes by offering an account of how social and political contexts can influence the nature, functions, and valence of PCC within national identities

Communism and the Meaning of Social Memory: Towards a Critical-Interpretive Approach

This article was published in the journal, Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science [© Springer Verlag] and the definitive version is available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12124-012-9207-xUsing a case study of representations of communism in Romania, the paper offers a sketch of a critical-interpretive approach for exploring and engaging with the social memory of communism. When one considers the various contemporary appraisals, responses to and positions towards the communist period one identifies and one is obliged to deal with a series of personal and collective moral/political quandaries. In their attempt to bring about historical justice, political elites create a world that conforms more to their needs and desires than to the diversity of meanings of communism, experiences and dilemmas of lay people. This paper argues that one needs to study formal aspects of social memory as well as "lived", often conflicting, attitudinal and mnemonic stances and interpretive frameworks. One needs to strive to find the meaning of the social memory of communism in the sometimes contradictory, paradoxical attitudes and meanings that members of society communicate, endorse and debate. Many of the ethical quandaries and dilemmas of collective memory and recent history can be better understood by describing the discursive and sociocultural processes of meaning-making and meaning-interpretation carried out by members of a polity

A history of post-communist remembrance: from memory politics to the emergence of a field of anticommunism

This article invites the view that the Europeanization of an antitotalitarian “collective memory” of communism reveals the emergence of a field of anticommunism. This transnational field is inextricably tied to the proliferation of state-sponsored and anticommunist memory institutes across Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), but cannot be treated as epiphenomenal to their propagation. The diffusion of bodies tasked with establishing the “true” history of communism reflects, first and foremost, a shift in the region’s approach to its past, one driven by the right’s frustration over an allegedly pervasive influence of former communist cliques. Memory institutes spread as the CEE right progressively perceives their emphasis on research and public education as a safer alternative to botched lustration processes. However, the field of anticommunism extends beyond diffusion by seeking to leverage the European Union institutional apparatus to generate previously unavailable forms of symbolic capital for anticommunist narratives. This results in an entirely different challenge, which requires reconciling of disparate ideological and national interests. In this article, I illustrate some of these nationally diverse, but internationally converging, trajectories of communist extrication from the vantage point of its main exponents: the anticommunist memory entrepreneurs, who are invariably found at the helm of memory institutes. Inhabiting the space around the political, historiographic, and Eurocratic fields, anticommunist entrepreneurs weave a complex web of alliances that ultimately help produce an autonomous field of anticommunism

Qualitative psychology and the archive: Introduction to the special section

The special section considers the relevance of a reflexive engagement with archives in psychology, and explores the value of archives as a resource for empirical inquiry and scholarship. The contributions offer reflective commentaries on the potential and limitations of working with (and within) archives. They also highlight the range of theoretical, methodological and practical issues that psychologists might want to take into account when engaging in this kind of inquiry, including the need to treat archives and archiving as set of societal practices through which the past is not only preserved, but also constructed, and constituted

Accounts of a troubled past: Psychology, history, and texts of experience

The article considers the contribution that discursive psychology can make to the study of accounts of a troubled past, using, as relevant examples, testimonies of Holocaust survivors and confessions of collaboration with the secret police in communist Eastern Europe. Survivor testimonies and confessions of former informants are analyzed as instances of public remembering which straddle historical and psychological enquiries: they are, at the same time, stories of individual fates, replete with references to psychological states, motives and cognitions, and discourses of history, part of a socially and institutionally mediated collective struggle with a painful, unsettling, or traumatic past. Also, the examples point to two different ways in which archives are relevant to the study of human experience. In the case of Holocaust survivor testimony, personal recollections are usually documented in order to be systematically archived and made part of the official record of the past, while in the case of collaboration with the security services, it is the opening of the ‘official’ archives, and the fallout from this development, that made the confessions and public apologies necessary. The article argues that discursive psychology’s emphasis on remembering as a dynamic, performative and rhetorical practice, situated in a specific social and historical context offers a particularly productive way of exploring the interplay between personal experience and the institutional production of historical knowledge, one that helps to address some of the challenges encountered by psychologists and historians interested in researching accounts of troubled past