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

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...

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

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

Variation between manufacturers’ declared vibration emission values and those measured under simulated workplace conditions for a range of hand-held power tools typically found in the construction industry

Tool manufacturers are required to declare the vibration emission of their hand-held power tools in order to sell them within Europe. To enable comparison between different manufacturers, tests are carried out in accordance with the relevant test code (such as those defined in the ISO 8662 and EN 60745 series). These tests may be carried out in artificial circumstances which do not necessarily correctly predict the vibration emission that would be obtained in the workplace and often underestimate the magnitude of the vibration. In practice, tools are used with a range of inserted tools on different materials, resulting in a range of vibration emission values for a given tool. CEN Technical Report, CEN/TR 15350 provides multiplication factors to enable an estimate of the workplace vibration emission to be obtained from the manufacturers’ data. This paper compares the manufacturers’ declared vibration emission values with those measured for the public-domain OPERC HAVTEC database. The OPERC measurements have been made according to ISO 5349 using simulated workplace conditions, with a range of inserted tools for each machine tested. A total of 656 tool/attachment combinations are presented from 105 different tool models, covering a wide range of applications typically found within the construction industry. The measured data is compared with the manufacturers declared emission value, with and without the multiplication factors given in CEN/TR 15350. It was found that, in general, the manufacturers’ declared values underestimated the workplace vibration emission, whereas the multiplication factors given in CEN/TR 15350 overestimated the workplace vibration emission

Sacks, categories and gender

In this chapter, we chart our journey from reading Harvey Sacks’s work on conversation analysis and membership categories to applying it in research on gender and language. We tell our interconnected story as three generations of PhD supervisors and students working in discursive psychology. Discursive psychology’s core aim, aligned to conversation analysis and ethnomethodology, is the respecification of psychology’s topics (e.g., cognition, attitudes, memory, prejudice, identity) as member’s orientations; as members’, rather than analysts’, topics. This chapter will describe how we were inspired by Sacks to interrogate identity through the sequential analysis of membership categories. We show how researchers can ‘capture’ gender as it is made relevant for the doing of some action in sequences of conversation, and how we might ‘scale up’ from a single case to working with larger datasets

Psychology, sociology and interaction: disciplinary allegiance or analytic quality? - a response to Housley and Fitzgerald

Psychology, sociology and interaction: disciplinary allegiance or analytic quality? - a response to Housley and Fitzgeral