Discursive Social Psychology Research Papers

The introduction of innovative methods of statecraft institutionalised surveillance in the name of good governance. The modernization of surveillance initiated censorship that was legitimised in India by the British government during the colonial period. The Indian government appropriated the concept of censorship from the colonial masters, and exhibited and justified, more often than not, in a perverse manner, that depiction of sexually explicit contents and representation of contentious events that may lead to communal clashes will be

The article introduces discourse analysis as a fruitful approach to psychotherapy change-process research. Extracts are presented from a successfully resolved, client-specified, problematic theme that was selected from a successful 8-session psychodynamic-interpersonal therapy of a female client presenting with a major depressive episode. The study offers a heuristic demonstrating (a) how resolution of the client's problem evolved from implications raised by the client's own description of her predicament and involved the therapist's legitimation of a morally defensible account of the client's actions and (b) how cultural meanings can be brought into the consulting room as intimately personal problems. The implications of studying therapeutic change as a discursive activity comprising the use and negotiation of sociocultural meanings are discussed.

- by Anna Madill
- •
- Discourse Analysis, Abnormal Psychology, Clinical Psychology, Brief Psychotherapy

Every society, every culture, every group of people who recognize themselves as a collective, have theories about the world and what their place is in that world. This essay is going to explore the effects of systematic oppression, the impact thereof on social, economic, political, and psychological on individuals as well as marginalized communities with specific references to South Africa (SA) and the United States (US).

- by Michael Arfken
- •
- Cognitive Psychology, Multiculturalism, Marxism, Practice theory

This paper provides an overview of the development and application of focus groups. It rethinks the conventional history associated with this approach in at least four ways. We reinsert a forgotten pioneer of focus groups, Herta Herzog, into our narrative. Secondly, we trace the emergence of group-based research to the work of applied psychologists in the early twentieth century and argue that the conditions of possibility for the uptake of this method were contingent on the asking of “why” questions. We follow the thread of “why” questions from the applied psychologists through to motivation research and the promotion of focus groups by Herzog to practitioners. Exploring the literature on motivation research unearths a further novel contribution: we excavate the use of “interpretative focus groups” by this community of practice. In addition, our close reading of motivation research and focus groups permits us to problematise the distinctions made by Calder [1977. “Focus Groups and the Nature of Qualitative Marketing Research.” Journal of Marketing Research 14: 353–364]. We subsequently trace the uptake of this methodology in the tobacco industry as a means of making an epistemological and political argument for the greater use of focus groups. Initially, we do so by charting the rise of social constructionism and non-individualistic consumer research. This enables us to navigate the highways and byways of discursive psychology, interpretive research, Consumer Culture Theory and on to feminist and Critical Marketing Studies. The engagement with focus groups with respect to the latter traditions is woefully underdeveloped. Our political argument is that focus group methodology can speak to the interests of many constituents in marketing theory and practice. It is not wedded to any specific social or political agenda. This means that its potential contribution to the study of consumption, markets and culture is multi-faceted.

- by mark tadajewski
- •
- Marketing, History, Sociology, Focus Group discussions

This paper distinguishes a series of contingent and necessary problems that arise in the design, conduct, analysis and reporting of open-ended or conversational qualitative interviews in psychological research. Contingent problems in the reporting of interviews include: (1) the deletion of the interviewer; (2) the conventions for representing interaction; (3) the specificity of analytic observations; (4) the unavailability of the interview setup ; (5) the failure to consider interviews as interaction. Necessary problems include: (1) the flooding of the interview with social science agendas and categories; (2) the complex and varying footing positions of interviewer and interviewee; (3) the orientations to stake and interest on the part of the interviewer and interviewee; (4) the reproduction of cognitivism. The paper ends with two kinds of recommendation. First, we argue that interviews should be studied as an interactional object, and that study should feed back into the design, conduct and analysis of interviews so that they can be used more effectively in cases where they are the most appropriate data gathering tools. Second, these problems with open-ended interviews highlight a range of specific virtues of basing analysis on naturalistic materials. Reasons for moving away from the use of interviews for many research questions are described. Qualitative Research in Psychology 2005; 2: 281 Á/307

- by Jonathan Potter and +1
- •
- Conversation Analysis, Qualitative methodology, Discursive Social Psychology, Discursive Psychology

The opposing positions of the social model of disability and the biomedical framework of impairment have created tensions regarding what constitutes ‘normality’. In this article, we drew upon focus group data of parents, professionals, and people with autism, to explore how the dilemmatic tensions of normality and abnormality and of disability and ability were managed. Our findings illustrate how the boundaries of normality in relation to autism are blurred, as well as how the autistic identity is fluid. The members of the focus group invoked their epistemic rights to assert their positions and delicately considered the limitations of the rhetoric of cure. Our findings have implications for professionals working with families of children with autism, specifically as they aim to maintain a balance between providing sufficient support and not being intrusive, and we show how a medical sociology can facilitate an understanding of autism as a social category.

- by Khalid Karim
- •
- Discourse Analysis, Disability Studies, Human Rights, Critical Disability Studies

The open-ended interview is the preeminent data generation technique in methodological traditions as disparate as ethnography, phenomenology (in its different forms), psychoanalysis, narrative psychology,
grounded theory, and (much) discourse analysis.
Our aim in this chapter is to make the case that
interviewing has been too easy, too obvious, too
little studied, and too open to providing a convenient
launch pad for poor research. We will argue
that interview research will be made better if it
faces up to a series of eight challenges that arise in
the design, conduct, analysis, and reporting of
qualitative interviews. Some research studies
already face up to some of these challenges; few
studies face up to all of them. We will make our
case strongly and bluntly with the aim of provoking
debate where not enough has taken place. These challenges are overlapping, but we have separated them in the way we have for clarity. It is important to emphasize that our aim is not to criticize interviews but to make them better.

- by Alexa Hepburn and +1
- •
- Qualitative methodology, Discursive Social Psychology, Discursive Psychology, In-depth Interviews

What, if anything, is the correlation between the specialized or technical ideas of the philosopher and the rest of his existence? His everyday life outside his philosophical role. In the specialized reality and reality constitution, when... more

- by Ulrich de Balbian
- •
- Sociology, Anthropology, Philosophy, Metaphysics

This paper provides a worked exemplar of psychotherapy research using the approach of conversation analysis inspired discourse analysis (CA/DA), sometimes known as discursive psychology (Edwards & Potter, 1992; Potter, 2003; Potter & Wetherell, 1987). The aim of the paper is to explore the potential usefulness of discursive analysis for qualitative psychotherapy research within a relational centred ethos. The paper presents an analysis of extracts from a case of psychodynamic-interpersonal psychotherapy based on Hobson’s (1985) conversational model. This model has a particular relational focus in assuming clients’ problems arise from relationship disturbances and that the therapeutic encounter is a vehicle for the manifestation, exploration, and modification of such problems. The model is conversational in that intervention consists of therapists’ use of strategies such as negotiation, metaphor, and development of a ‘common feeling language’...

- by Anna Madill
- •
- Discourse Analysis, Clinical Psychology, Psychoanalysis, Emotion

This book is devoted to the re-introduction of the remarkably original approach to sociological inquiry developed by Harvey Sacks. We intend the volume as an incitement to experts to return to the original lectures of Sacks with fresh eyes, and a provocation for those unfamiliar to read Sacks for the first time. Sacks’ remarkable analyses offer a means of doing sociology that provides for highly technical, detailed, and yet stunningly simple solutions to some of the most trenchant troubles for the social sciences relating to language, culture, meaning, knowledge, action, and social organisation. The influence of Sacks’ work has not been widespread: something we aim to address with this collection. Yet certain areas of sociology, human geography, communication and media studies, psychology, and linguistics have been re-oriented to the sorts of analyses that are possible by starting with the lived detail of action and language-in-interaction; details that are discoverable, rather than contrived or modelled in and through social scientific theory, as they are actually produced, used, and accomplished by members engaged in actual activities. In this collection, scholars working in a range of different fields and with ranging interests, outline the ways in which their work has been inspired and influenced shaped by Sacks’ approach, and how their current research is taking those insights forward in new directions. As such, it provides both an introduction to, and an exploration of, the work and influence of Harvey Sacks.

This paper contains a relational model of self and personality development. From a relationalist perspective, personality does not consist of a series of static traits that are located within individuals. While there is stability in human action there is also dramatic variability. People develop and exhibit multiple selves in different contexts and different social relationships. Selves are reflective control structures -- relational representations of "who we are" that guide our interactions with others. Although different, our diverse selves operate as aspects of the same individual person. This paper elaborates this idea in the context of a series of ideographic analyses of self and personality development in individuals, and in epigenetic analysis of dynamic personality dispositions over the course of development.

- by Michael Mascolo
- •
- Personality Psychology, Developmental Psychology, Self and Identity, Personality

http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-7091-1382-0
Applied conversation analytic research seeks to understand the ways in which conversational practices are modified in order to fulfill institutional aims. Psychotherapy is one such institution, and in recent years, a research literature has developed in which conversation analysis has been applied to psychotherapy interaction. This chapter provides an overview of the five main features of talk-in-interaction of interest in conversation analysis: turn-taking, sequence organization, repair, word selection, and action formation. An extract from psychotherapy interaction is explored in relation to each of these five features of talk. The analytic lens of conversation analysis and its conceptualization of key phenomena are different in many respects to that of traditional psychotherapy research. Moreover, when directed towards psychotherapy, selection of material has been, in the main, in accordance with conversation analytically informed, as opposed to therapy-informed, observations. The result is that conversation analytic research may seem psychologically shallow to the psychotherapy community: too removed from basic assumptions about human subjectivity and mute on questions of experiential change which are likely of interest to therapists. However, this therapy-neutral orientation may be a significant strength in allowing conversation analysis to complement and enhance process research through revealing what psychotherapy may not notice about itself.

- by Anna Madill
- •
- Discourse Analysis, Psychology, Clinical Psychology, Social Psychology

Este artículo se propone a caracterizar la especificidad de la Psicología Discursiva (PD) en tanto particular propuesta teórica y metodológica para la investigación cualitativa en psicología social, diferenciándola de otras formas de investigación cualitativa y de análisis del discurso. Para ello, se destaca la importante influencia de la perspectiva etnometodológica como antecedente teórico central de la PD, la cual incide fuertemente en su conceptualización de lo social y en su aproximación al trabajo empírico. En primer lugar, se caracteriza la forma en que la etnometodología se aproxima al estudio de la realidad social, enfatizando la manera en que concibe al actor, el orden y la acción social. En segundo lugar, se da cuenta del modo en que la PD hace suyos ciertos postulados teóricos y metodológicos de la tradición etnometodológica, los cuales permiten comprender mejor la especificidad de la PD en el campo de la investigación cualitativa en psicología social.

This article analyzes early actions in 50 calls reporting cases of abuse to a national child protection helpline in the UK (the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children Helpline, NSPCC). It focuses on the early turns in the caller’s reason
for call, in particular, a class of constructions in which the caller describes himself or herself as “concerned about x” (or similar). Analysis of the corpus of calls suggests concern constructions are canonical early elements of the reason-for-call sequence. Concern constructions (a) are oriented to a pre-move in the caller’s reason
for call, (b) project the unpacking of concerns in a way oriented to the NSPCC’s institutional role, (c) attend to epistemological asymmetries between caller and call taker and remove the requirement for disaffiliative next actions such as asking for the basis of claims, (d) provide a way for the Child Protection Officer to take abuse claims seriously while not presupposing their truth, and (e) display an appropriate caller stance. These observations are supported by an analysis of deviant cases. The broader implications of this study for the relation between psychology, interaction, and institutions are discussed.

abstract In the wake of Billig's thesis on banal nationalism, numerous social psychology studies have been produced documenting on the explicit manifestation or implicit indexicalisation of variants of national identity within text and talk. Within this strand of work, some attention has been paid to ways in which the banal manifestation of national referents may be further interrogated from a critical perspective focusing on Occidentalism. Drawing on this emerging line of research, an analysis is presented here of a travelogue on 'the Greek crisis', published in a globally circulating magazine (Vanity Fair). Using tools and concepts from the discursive turn in social psychology, the analysis highlights ways in which Occidentalist assumptions claim rhetorical and ideological legitimacy within a text that advances a 'culturalist' explanation of the financial crisis in which Greece has been entangled since 2009. The analysis focuses on ways in which the authorial voice others Greece culturally, while at the same time, manages its own accountability and (reaffirms ms its Occidental credentials.

This paper discusses the historical production of the old age considering the dispositif of age. A genealogical tracking is outlined in order to point out some lines that have configured statements about the old age, especially in biopolitical contexts. It is emphasized how the discourses of truth about the old age do produce regimes of subjectification and constitute subjects from normalizing and generalizing references. Starting from the deconstructing of discourses regarding the old age, it is indicated the possibility of considering the experiences of the old age aside from the forms of tutelage and from the forms of calculated management of life.

Distinct discourses related to the socioenvironmental issue emerge from the insertion of the environmental dimension in different fields of knowledge. Considering the historical force of games, sports and leisure as sociocultural phenomena in the field of physical education, the aim of this article is to analyze how these phenomena influence the constitution of environmental ideals considering, more broadly, discourses that emerge from dialogues between the physical education and the environmental fields. To this end, the corpus of analysis comprised articles in scientific journals that address the insertion of the environmental dimension in physical education in Brazil. In general, the results of the Discursive Textual Analysis on the researched corpus showed that the influence of games, sports and activities in leisure contexts in the constitution of environmental ideals is still quite rudimentary.

- by Cae Rodrigues
- •
- Critical Theory, Discourse Analysis, Sociology of Sport, Sport Psychology

This paper assesses the role of deconstruction as an important orientation for critical and discursive psychologists. In order to understand what deconstruction involves, key aspects of Jacques Derrida's work are highlighted and explained, notably `undecidables' such as the trace, the supplement, differance. The ways in which undecidability can be incorporated into, and used to develop, critical and discursive work are explored. Previous attempts at incorporating deconstruction within critical psychology texts are examined, and it is suggested that the more radically anti-foundationalist features of a Derridean deconstruction are typically by-passed in this literature. It is argued that deconstruction in this broader sense offers political as well as critical possibilities. It is suggested that deconstruction provides a radical orientation to language and meaning, and a resource for showing us how identities and realities can be constituted in order to be recognizable as not constituted. It is concluded that deconstruction is important for the development of both critical and discursive psychology, allowing as it does a more profound reflection on both the supplementary character of psychological phenomena, and the processes of marginalization and exclusion which have put these subversive psychologies into play.

Analytic techniques currently employed in empirical work on national identity often fail to correspond to the way in which the construct is conceptualised in theory. In particular, approaches that emphasise the strategic and dialogic quality of national identity claims in everyday life do not easily combine with analytic practices that treat interview respondents’ self-descriptions as acts of literal self-disclosure. Applying Goffman’s constructs of frame and footing to a corpus of data collected in England, we consider how national identities may be performatively displayed in interview encounters. We argue that analytic approaches that overlook subordinate channels of communication, which take utterances out of narrative context, and which focus on what respondents report explicitly at the expense of what is elided or assumed in conversation, may contribute to overly literal, and conceptually unsophisticated, interpretations of the process of self-representation.

- by Susan Condor
- •
- Sociology, Social Theory, Sociology of Culture, Social Psychology
- by Nikos Bozatzis
- •
- Discursive Social Psychology, Discursive Psychology

El presente capítulo analiza el libro Psicolojía del pueblo araucano escrito por Tomás Guevara y publicado en 1908. Esta publicación se enmarca en el contexto sociopolítico chileno en que se buscaba el progreso y desarrollo de la moral de la raza chilena, adoptando el higienismo como sustento científico y el patriotismo como motivación política. En este contexto se realiza un análisis histórico del discurso (Wodak, 2003), con el objetivo de develar las características psicológicas atribuidas al sujeto mapuche en el texto seleccionado en relación al contexto en el que se inserta. Para llevar a cabo el objetivo, se hace una revisión de la literatura en torno al tema, se exponen elementos conceptuales y se da cuenta de las estrategias metodológicas utilizadas.

Online forums provide a wealth of publicly accessible data and have proven particularly useful for critical psychologists wishing to examine naturalistic data on a wide range of social phenomena. This article begins by considering the use of online discussion forums for critical discursive psychological research and outlines ethical debates regarding their use (particularly in light of past and current British Psychological Society guidelines). To demonstrate how such data can be used in critical psychology I provide an illustrative example of a discursive analysis of a single online discussion thread taken from a diabetes newsgroup that examines anti-social online behaviours in the form of “trolling,” “flaming,” and heterosexism.

Jill Schostak and I wrote this book as part of our evolving interest in doing research radically. By radically we mean engaging with people's voices to learn how to create the conditions for social justice and for democratising all the organisations of everyday life. We draw on our own research but also on the ways in which the media is used to shaw people's voices and behaviours. We explore all the ways in which the desires and demands of elites are inscribed upon minds and bodies as well as how writing may create the conditions for counter inscriptions. Writing research is to engage politically. Whether it is the Arab Spring re-inscribing hopes for freedom, the Occupy Movement or young people challenging orthodoxies at home or in classrooms through use of the media, it is the power of writing in its broadest sense that makes the difference.

- by John Schostak
- •
- Creative Writing, Critical Theory, Critical Theory, Critical Theory

The question of whether psychology can properly be regarded as a science has long been debated (Smedslund in Integrative Psychological & Behavioral Science, 50, 185–195, 2016 ). Science is typically understood as a method for producing reliable knowledge by testing falsifiable claims against objective evidence. Psychological phenomena, however, are traditionally taken to be “subjective” and hidden from view. To the extent that science relies upon objective observation, is a scientific psychology possible? In this paper, I argue that scientific psychology does not much fail to meet the requirements of objectivity as much as the concept of objectivity fails as a methodological principle for psychological science. The traditional notion of objectivity relies upon the distinction between a public, observable exterior and a private,
subjective interior. There are good reasons, however, to reject this dichotomy. Scholarship suggests that psychological knowledge arises neither from the “inside out” (subjectively) nor from the outsidein
(objectively), but instead intersubjective processes that occur between people. If this is so, then objectivist methodology may do more to obscure than illuminate our understanding of psychological functioning. From this view, we face a dilemma: Do we, in the name of science, cling to an objective epistemology that cuts us off from the richness of psychological activity? Or do we seek to develop a rigorous intersubjective psychology that exploits the processes through which we gain psychological knowledge in the first place? If such a psychology can produce systematic, reliable and useful knowledge, then the question of whether its practices are “scientific” in the traditional sense would become irrelevant.

- by Michael Mascolo
- •
- Psychology, Social Psychology, Social Sciences, Qualitative methodology

Pride has been presented as an emotion that is very often positive and is clearly expressed in prototypical forms in celebrations of personal triumph. However, there are some problems with this view: expressions of prototypical pride may in fact be uncommon occurrences (Tracy & Robins, 2004), there is some evidence to suggest that pride is often mixed with components of other positive and negative emotions (Sullivan, 2010) and a role for language in understanding pride has been largely avoided (Sullivan, 2007). This chapter will examine these issues using a specific detailed case study of a New Zealand golfer, Michael Campbell, winning the US Open tournament in 2005. Although idiographic approaches such as case studies are not widely used in psychology, they can provide valuable insights for subsequent empirical testing, theoretical elaboration and conceptual analysis. This chapter examines Campbell's immediate reactions to winning and analyses his expressive behaviour and remarks at the trophy presentation ceremony and includes material from a subsequent press interview. The results indicate that understanding facial and bodily expressive actions in situations of personal triumph—including controllable and uncontrollable, spontaneous and intentional features—requires close attention to their meaning and personal significance as described and expressed in discourse.

- by Gavin B Sullivan
- •
- Emotion, Discursive Social Psychology, Discursive Psychology, Wittgenstein

Accounts from a range of disciplines across the social sciences have described an essential ambivalence in modern Greek national identity. Modern Greek national identity is shown to encompass an ideological tension between oriental and occidental cultural stereotypes. Critical ethnographers have described the ways in which this symbolic ambivalence is casually reproduced within everyday discourse in Greece. Recent developments in critical social psychology also draw attention to the ideological dilemmas manifested within lay argumentative practices. Moreover, the discursive turn within social psychology offers a range of analytic concepts and tools for disentangling the identity work accomplished within talk in interaction. Drawing upon evidence from ethnographic analyses, the present research offers a social psychological account of the rhetorical reiteration of the ideological ambivalence of modern Greek national identity within talk. To that end, two empirical studies were conducted. The first involved Greek students in Lancaster University and the second Greek employees in the European Commission in Brussels. In both studies, the research participants were asked to account for their living experiences in their adopted countries of residence. Their accounts were audio recorded and excerpts of their talk discourse analysed. The analyses highlighted the flexible discursive uses of cultural stereotypes of modern Greek national identity. It is shown that the rhetorical deployment of these stereotypes is designed to ward off negative identity inferences about the speakers. In particular, the identity inferences sought to be disavowed are the one of prejudice (as xenophobia) and the one of xenomania. The latter refers to a culturally specific ideological charge within the context of modern Greece, which targets unwarranted pro-Western attitudes. Overall, the analyses conducted highlight the reiteration of the cultural ambivalence of modern Greek national identity within talk and outline the grounds for a convergence of ethnographic arguments about the symbolic uses of stereotypes with social psychological arguments about their interactional uses.

In the wake of Billig’s thesis on banal nationalism, numerous social psychology studies have been produced documenting on the explicit manifestation or implicit indexicalisation of variants of national identity within text and talk. Within this strand of work, some attention has been paid to ways in which the banal manifestation of national referents may be further interrogated from a critical perspective focusing on Occidentalism. Drawing on this emerging line of research, an analysis is presented here of a travelogue on ‘the Greek crisis’, published in a globally circulating magazine (Vanity Fair). Using tools and concepts from the discursive turn in social psychology, the analysis highlights ways in which Occidentalist assumptions claim rhetorical and ideological legitimacy within a text that advances a ‘culturalist’ explanation of the financial crisis in which Greece has been entangled since 2009. The analysis focuses on ways in which the authorial voice others Greece culturally...

Aim: Our aim is to offer and illustrates a novel meta-methodology to enhance the rigour of method selection and understanding of results in pluralist qualitative research (PQR).
Method: To do so, we make innovative use of Braun and Clarke’s (2006) articulation of four discrete dimensions characterising different forms of thematic analysis. We provide secondary analyses of an interview from the Social Media, Men who have Sex with Men and Sexual Health project using critical discursive psychology, dialogical analysis, interpretative phenomenological analysis, and psychosocial narrative analysis.
Results: All four methods identified aspects of three central foci: Compartmentalisation, Detachment, and Jouissance.
Conclusion: We discuss how our proposed meta-methodology provides a rationale for the selection of methods in a PQR, offer evidence that it can anticipate the relative similarity in focus of the methods employed, and argue that our meta-methodology reveals the possibility of identifying an ‘axial’ or ‘hub’ method’ of a PQR which might be particularly fruitful in exploring commonalities and differences in results. Finally, we examine the synergies and challenges of combining pairs of the methods we used.

- by Anna Madill
- •
- Discourse Analysis, Psychology, Clinical Psychology, Cognitive Psychology

Drawing upon the notion of occidentalism, developed within cultural theory and critical ethnography, this paper explores ways in which explicit and / or implicit assumptions about the West and western self are implicated, in their conversational mobilization, to accountability management. The data analysed come from a study in Western Thrace (Greece), which included interviews and focus group with majority Greek educators about the Muslim minority historically residing in the region. The analysis presented employs tools from critical discursive social psychology. Building upon discourse analytic treatments within social psychology on the mobilization of national categories and accountability management in talk, it is argued that the banal indexicalisation of national categories in talk opens the space for a critical interrogation of the banal indexicalisation of an occidentalist cultural imagery that posits a hierarchical distinction between cultures of the West and the Rest.

This paper explores how the Lebanese students struggle in the use of “Verbal Discrimination” through language. The study discusses how students convey either a racist or a non-racist identity through their talk and conversation. The research addresses the following questions: (1)Do the social background and past experiences play a role in the construction of a "racist identity or non-racist" that are reflected in the language of the speaker? (2) Are these identities formed affected by other cultures and ideologies? (3) How do the "interpretive repertoires" play a role in the formation of the ideology of the speaker? (4) And how is that reflected in his or her surroundings? I argue that as a result of the interpretive repertoires that position the speakers, participants suffer from a struggle in the formation of their identities. Interviews and narratives in the research will aid my argument, supported by theories suggested by pioneers in Discourse Analysis and Discursive Psychology.

- by Walid M Rihane
- •
- Discourse Analysis, Sociology, Philosophy, Philosophy Of Language

Psychological research into eating practices has focused mainly on attitudes and behaviour towards food, and disorders of eating. Using
experimental and questionnaire-based designs, these studies place an emphasis on individual consumption and cognitive appraisal, overlooking
the interactive context in which food is eaten. The current article examines eating practices in a more naturalistic environment, using mealtime
conversations tape-recorded by families at home. The empirical data highlight three issues concerning the discursive construction of eating practices, which raise problems for the existing methodologies. These
are: (1) how the nature and evaluation of food are negotiable qualities; (2) the use of participants’ physiological states as rhetorical devices; and
(3) the variable construction of norms of eating practices. The article thus challenges some key assumptions in the dominant literature and indicates the virtues of an approach to eating practices using interactionally based methodologies.

- by Jonathan Potter and +1
- •
- Conversation Analysis, Discursive Social Psychology, Discursive Psychology, Constructionism

Several qualitative researchers using discursive methodologies have noted how opposition to homosexuality has not necessarily diminished, despite the general expression of liberal tolerance in many settings. Instead, heterosexist rhetoric has shifted to accommodate political change. Our research builds on this observation within the South African context, using a discursive psychology approach. We examine rhetorical strategies of " heterosexual recuperation " : the ways that heterosexual boundaries and the dominance of heterosexuality are maintained by speakers, at the same time as they attempt to avoid being heard as heterosexist. Drawing on data from a qualitative study conducted with heterosexual-identifying Black South Africans (32) from four provinces, we focus on talk that was resourced by a " discourse of tolerance " and characterised by speakers' concern to avoid the attribution of heterosexism. This talk was analysed using thematic analysis, to which discursive psychology techniques were applied. We identified two ways of speaking that relied on this discourse – (1) " As long as they do it in private " , and (2) " Flashing their homosexuality " – and show how they ultimately worked to recuperate heterosexuality and marginalise non-normative sexualities. We discuss the implications of these findings in relation to a critical psychology that works to challenge hetero-patriarchal norms.

This article reports a rhetorical discourse analysis of learner perspectives on language diversity in a contemporary South African high school. Based on four group discussions with Grade 12 isiXhosa, Afrikaans and English-speaking learners, the analysis traces two interrelated clusters of argument. In the first, a liberal discourse of individual freedom and human rights is mobilised to argue against a language order where languages are made compulsory, or forced upon people. We show that this argument was employed inconsistently: it only extended to languages other than English. To understand how this dilemmatic use of liberal ideas was justified, we trace a second line of argument. This is the construction of English as a universal language and, consequently as neutral, necessary and unifying; a language of 'rational choice' for all South Africans. Based on these arguments, language diversity -or the formal recognition and empowerment of languages other than English -was problematised as both violating individual rights of choice and a public order characterised by the mutual and universal understanding afforded by the universality of English. Supporting English-only practices in the school was thus presented as itself a liberal gesture, allowing not only the continued racialisation of isiXhosa, but also a rhetoric of racial blame: isiXhosa speakers, when they use their language in public, were blamed for instigating racial tension and misunderstanding in the school.

- by Desmond Painter
- •
- Critical Race Studies, Sociolinguistics, Linguistic Anthropology, Race and Racism

This paper explores issues concerning personal agency in discursive psychology and discourse analysis, with a particular emphasis on agency in terms of motivational accounts of the person. Issues are discussed in relation to the efficacy, acceptability, and accessibility of discourse analytic research for the practising psychotherapist. We suggest that such an approach may raise problems in four areas. First, we argue that without explicit theorization of the subject as language user, discourse analysis may be vulnerable to the charge of determinism. Second, theorization of the subject as language user may be required to account successfully for individual consistency and continuity of identity. Third, although claiming to critique commonsense notions of subjectivity, implicit dualist assumptions facilitate a reading of discursive psychology that is compatible with a motivational model of the person. Finally, we argue that discursive psychology itself implies a particular model of the strategically motivated language user. We conclude that, although these issues require clarification, discursive psychology and discourse analysis have much to offer psychotherapy research.

- by Nikos Bozatzis
- •
- Discourse Analysis, Social Psychology, Discursive Social Psychology, Modern Greece

La presenta investigación tiene como objetivo analizar la construcción discursiva de la sociedad chilena y su sexualidad a partir de los medios nacionales de prensa escrita durante el primer periodo de la industria cultural de El Chacotero Sentimental (1996-2000). Con el fin de constituirse como una crítica de la memoria tensionando la construcción oficial de consenso del chile de la post-última-dictadura, se realizó un análisis de discurso por medio de repertorios interpretativos a 10 artículos que describieran a sociedad chilena a partir de El Chacotero Sentimental o viceversa. Los resultados dan cuenta de cinco repertorios para referirse a la sociedad chilena y su sexualidad, estos son Discurso Psi, Colectivo Anónimo, Divorcio de la Realidad, Eufemístico, y Chacotero. Estos se articulan en una dinámica que puede ser entendida bajo los conceptos de Industria Psi y Pornografía en tanto mecanismos que producen una multiplicidad de prácticas que tienen como carácter común psicologizar el fenómeno confesional por medio de la patologización o de la explicación validada por profesionales de la salud mental, así como también generar un devenir público de la intimidad volviéndola espectáculo comercializable que desdibuja toda asimetría económico-político-social, ya sea por medio de la identificación anónima o por la referencia a problemáticas comunes, posicionando a los medios como una vocería despolitizada desplazando el foco de atención desde la diferencias y discrepancias hacia puntos en común. De esta forma que se incentiva la política del consenso, mientras que a la vez introducen a los sujetos al mercado, ya sea por medio de la necesidad de atención psicológica o por medio de la necesidad de exhibición pública. Así se desprende una definición de libertad que se somete a la administración de los cuerpos y la explotación de los placeres y deseos.

- by Cristopher Yáñez-Urbina
- •
- Cultural Studies, Sex and Gender, Feminist Theory, Sexuality

Although the Internet has opened up new avenues for identity expression, many web-based sources have yet to be examined. Online testimonials as a form word-of-mouth advertising are a relatively new development. The present study examines the construction of masculinities in men’s cosmetics adverting testimonials presented on the website of a leading brand. The dataset is examined using discursive psychology and membership categorization analysis methodologies. The findings indicate that when men write facial cosmetics testimonials they still justify the use of these non-typical masculine products even in the absence of others’ responses. The analysis highlights the continued difficulty men report in using typically feminized products, frequently accounting for their cosmetic use as a ‘corrective’ measure rather than for beautification. The implications for the marketing of masculine products are discussed.

- by Matthew Hall
- •
- Marketing, Discourse Analysis, Gender Studies, Internet Studies

This paper is an exploration into the fear of crime that pervades South
Africa, indeed more than crime itself. The obvious linkage of high rates
of crime resulting in higher degree of fear of crime suggests itself.
However, in the South African context, there exist several paradoxes
between actual risk and perceived risk, and the linkage between crime
and fear is not as direct as it would intuitively appear. Further, in case
of South Africa the fear of crime is not just at the level of fear but can
better be described as hysteria, paranoia or obsession. Indeed this level
of fear of crime has had consequences both for policing responses and
popular responses (like lynching) to crime. Therefore, in this paper I
shall apply a five factor social-psychological model to South Africa, that
may explain not just the fear itself but also the reasons for the degree
of fear expressed

Discursive Social Psychology Research Papers (original) (raw)