ABSTRACT

Discursive Psychology is the first collection to systematically and critically appraise the influence and development of its foundational studies, exploring central concepts in social psychology such as attitudes, gender, cognition, memory, prejudice, and ideology. The book explores how discursive psychology has accommodated and responded to assumptions contained in classic studies, discussing what can still be gained from a dialogue with these inquiries, and which epistemological and methodological debates are still running, or are worth reviving.

International contributors look back at the original ideas in the classic papers, and consider the impact on and trajectory of subsequent work. Each chapter locates a foundational paper in its academic context, identifying the concerns that motivated the author and the particular perspective that informed their thinking. The contributors go on to identify the main empirical, theoretical or methodological contribution of the paper and its impact on consequent work in discursive psychology, including the contributors’ own work. Each chapter concludes with a critical consideration of how discursive psychology can continue to develop.

This book is a timely contribution to the advance of discursive psychology by fostering critical perspectives upon its intellectual and empirical agenda. It will appeal to those working in the area of discursive psychology, discourse analysis and social interaction, including researchers, social psychologists and students.

chapter |11 pages

Introduction: the evolution of discursive psychology

From classic to contemporary themes

part 1|72 pages

Epistemology and method

chapter 2|14 pages

Hitting ontological rock bottom

Discursive psychology's respecification of the realism/relativism debate

chapter 3|14 pages

Conversation analysis and discursive psychology

Taking up the challenge of Sacks' legacy

chapter 5|15 pages

Questions of context

Qualitative interviews as a source of knowledge

part 2|95 pages

Cognition, emotion and the psychological thesaurus

chapter 7|13 pages

From Loughborough with love

How discursive psychology rocked the heart of social psychology's love affair with attitudes

chapter 9|18 pages

Recasting the psychologist's question

Children's talk as social action

chapter 10|16 pages

Seeing the inside from the outside of children's minds

Displayed understanding and interactional competence

chapter 11|17 pages

From script theory to script formulation

Derek Edwards' shift from perceptual realism to the interactional-rhetorical

part 3|61 pages

Social categories, identity and memory

chapter 14|14 pages

Dilemmas of memory

The mind is not a tape recorder

chapter 15|16 pages

A forgotten legacy?

Towards a discursive psychology of the media

part 4|62 pages

Prejudice, racism and nationalism

chapter 16|14 pages

Re-theorizing prejudice in social psychology

From cognition to discourse

chapter 19|14 pages

Banal nationalism, postmodernism and capitalism

Revisiting Billig's critique of Rorty