Discursive psychology

Discursive psychology (DP) is the application of discourse analytic principles to psychological topics. In psychology’s dominant ‘cognitivist’ paradigm, individuals build mental representations of the world on the basis of innate mental structures and perceptual experience, and talk on that basis. The categories and content of discourse are considered to be a reflection, refracted through various kinds of error and distortion, of how the world is perceived to be. In contrast, DP begins with discourse (talk and text), both theoretically and empirically. Discourse is approached, not as the outcome of mental states and cognitive processes, but as a domain of action in its own right. [Continues...

Introspection Planning: Representing Metacognitive Experience

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Rethinking cognition: on Coulter on discourse and mind

This paper responds to, and comments on, Coulter’s (1999) critique of discursive psychology with particular reference to how cognition is conceptualised theoretically and analytically. It first identifies a number of basic misreadings of discursive psychological writings, which distort and, at times, reverse its position on the status of cognition. Second, it reviews the main ways in which cognition, mental states, and thoughts have been analytically conceptualised in discursive psychology (respecification of topics from mainstream psychology, studies of the psychological thesaurus in action, and studies of the way psychological issues are managed). Third, it considers two of Coulter’s substantive issues: the role of correct usage and the role of conceptual vs. empirical analysis. A series of problems are identified with Coulter’s development of both of these issues

Children’s whining in family interaction

Children’s whining is identified in extracts of video-recorded social interaction at home with siblings, parents and other family. “Whining” is primarily a vernacular category, but can be identified in terms of a set of phonetic features including pitch movement, loudness and nasality, and contrasted with crying. We focus on the uses and consequences of whining, in and for social interaction. Rather than identifying and attributing experiential causes or correlates of whining, we examine what children do with it, how it is occasioned, and how others, mostly parents, respond to it. Whining performs actions such as objecting to transgressions and thwarted goals, and making complaints. Parental reactions include one or more of: “stance inversion,” which is the adoption of a contrasting tone in next turn; formulations of the offending circumstances; orientations to remedying the problem; and rejection of the whine’s basis, including dispositional formulations of the child’s whining (e.g., being “grumpy”), and accounts for not complying with a called-for remedy. Data are in English

Social representations and discursive psychology

This article compares and contrasts the way a set of fundamental issues are treated in social representations theory and discursive psychology. These are: action, representation, communication, cognition, construction, epistemology and method. In each case we indicate arguments for the discursive psychological treatment. These arguments are then developed and illustrated through a discussion of Wagner et al. 1999 which highlights in particular the way the analysis fails to address the activities done by people when they are producing representations, and the epistemological troubles that arise from failing to address the role of the researcher’s own representations

Sociolinguistics, cognitivism and discursive psychology

This paper addresses the broad question of how work in sociolinguistics should be related to social theory, and in particular the assumptions about cognition that can underpin that relation. A discursive psychological approach to issues of cognition is pressed and illustrated by a reworking of Stubb's review of work on language and cognition. A discursive psychological approach is offered to the topics of racist discourse, courtroom interaction, scientific writing, and sexism. Discursive psychology rejects the approach to 'cognition' as a collection of more or less stable inner entities and processes. Instead the focus is on the way 'mental phenomena' are both constructed and oriented to in people's practices

Equality and social justice

The exponential expansion of the human population of the earth, together with the accelerating pressure that is being placed on natural resources, is of a magnitude that threatens soon to render the expression 'scarce resources' pleonastic. Too many people chasing too few goods is a reliable recipe for disaster. The problems are of such a magnitude that the search for real solutions can readily appear futile. This is especially so because the gravest problems are often not theoretical at all, but practical. They are the problems of convincing contrary human beings of the necessity of radical changes in their life styles, and in their aspirations and expectations. The first step, however, is to find the correct theories. High on the list of priorities must be an adequate theory of the morally proper distribution among people of the scarce goods and resources which they all require. Once we have such a theory, it will be time enough to worry about getting people to listen, to understand, and to act. The received opinion, in many circles, is that the current distribution of goods and resources is unjust because it is gravely unequal. For all that there is evident truth in this claim, the problem of expressing it in a clear and theoretically perspicuous manner has proved to be an intractable one. The fault lies with egalitarianism itself. In its incomplete apprehension of the nature of injustice, it has embraced a collection of half-truths with a tenacity and a fervour which have seriously impeded further progress. My primary thesis is that egalitarianism, as a theory of social justice, is false. Some of the beliefs to which egalitarians have subscribed do deserve, however, to be preserved. My secondary thesis is that this can be achieved by incorporating these insights into a properly formulated, nonegalitarian, socialist theory of justice. This theory will not be presented in detail: instead, the discussion will range over a variety of considerations which converge upon socialism, as providing the only morally acceptable theory of distribution. If the treatment is sometimes tentative, speculative, and controversial, that is because the time has passed for toying with safe and cautious approaches to these problems

A model of discourse in action

In the last fifteen years or so a number of varied strands of research have been dubbed 'discourse analysis': speech act orientated studies of conversational coherence (e.g. Coulthard and Montgomery, 1981); so called 'discourse processes' work on story grammars and the like (e.g. van Dijk and Kintch, 1983); the 'Continental' discourse analysis of Foucault (e.g. 1971), which has been concerned to show the way different cultural entities are constituted discursively as well as the historical development of that constitution; and finally specific developments within the sociology of science which arose in part as a consequence of methodological debates on the role of discourse in research methods (e.g. Gilbert and Mulkay, 1984). The approach we have developed (Edwards and Potter, 1992; Potter and Wetherell, 1987; Wetherell and Potter, 1988) draws on important features of both the Continental and the sociology of science work; although it is also strongly influenced by developments in conversation analysis (e.g. Atkinson and Heritage, 1984) and rhetoric (e.g. Billig, 1987). It also emphasises the centrality of constructionist processes (Gergen, 1985); and this is a facet of discourse analysis we will develop further in the current article

Discourse analysis means doing analysis: a critique of six analytic shortcomings

A number of ways of treating talk and textual data are identified which fall short of discourse analysis. They are: (1) under-analysis through summary; (2) under-analysis through taking sides; (3) under-analysis through over-quotation or through isolated quotation; (4) the circular identification of discourses and mental constructs; (5) false survey; and (6) analysis that consists in simply spotting features. We show, by applying each of these to an extract from a recorded interview, that none of them actually analyse the data. We hope that illustrating shortcomings in this way will encourage further development of rigorous discourse analysis in social psychology