Discursive Psychology: Between Method and Paradigm
By Jonathan Potter. 2003
215 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Hammersley (2003) criticizes a particular style of discourse research for developing as a distinct paradigm, yet lacking the coherence a paradigm would require. He suggests a range of problems in relation to constructionism, reflexivity and the ‘thin’ model of the human actor, and argues instead for methodological eclecticism in which discourse analytic methods are supplementary to alternatives. This commentary highlights a range of confusions and misunderstandings in this critique. In particular, it highlights the way discourse analytic work is connected to a range of theoretical notions, most fundamentally in its theorizing of discourse itself as a medium oriented to action. It identifies important sources of incoherence that can arise when mixing discourse analytic and more traditional methods. It reiterates the virtues of constructionism, particularly when considering the operation of descriptions, stresses the value of exploring (rather than ignoring) reflexive issues, and emphasizes the rich and nuanced approach to psychology that has been developed in this tradition.
Subfields: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Language and Linguistics, Literature and Literary Theory
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a67b5da5802d8b1a454dd2cdebda8f93dfd7fc8a
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Citations in the corpus
- The Nature of Scientific Conceptions: A Discursive Psychological Perspective. (2008, background): “But it also is more than a simple paradigm: It is “an approach embedded in a web of theoretical and metatheoretical assumptions” (Potter, 2003, pp. 784–785).”
- Issues in the Analysis of Focus Groups: Generalisability, Quantifiability, Treatment of Context and Quotations (2010, methodology): “If our approach is based on conversation analysis (ten Have, 2002) or on discursive psychology (Potter, 1996, 1998, 2003), then incorporated analysis (see also Wilkinson, 2006) is also called for.”
- Studying talk and embodied practices : toward a psychology of materiality of ‘race relations’. (2005, background): “Instead, the aim is to describe participants’ orientations—how speakers and their interlocutors express themselves in occasioned instances of talk (Potter, 2003).”