Discursive psychology

Question 1

How does it build on social constructionism?

Answer 1

Our representation of/access to the world is socially constructed.
Two (of the various) assumptions of SC.
Language is important: social construction = through language exchange.
Knowledge and action go together: ways of construction world involve particular actions.

Question 2

What is discursive psychology?

Answer 2

Explores precisely how things get socially constructed, i.e. through discourse.
Ties the two conclusions together: language (talk and writing) as social action.

Question 3

Talk as social action

Answer 3

Humans do social action through talk and writing as well as action.
Communicates intimacy and security.

Focuses on:
Analysis (devices in discourse).
Topics of interest (psychology).
Data (naturally occuring conversations, unstructured interviews, printed material).

Analytic interest:
Focus on rhetoric, i,e, persuading and arguing.
People always persuading.

Question 4

What are the three main tasks of DP?

Answer 4

Highlight variability of descriptions.
Show how variable versions used to accomplish rehtorical business.
Examine how this process beings about, sustains, and legitmates social practices.

Question 4

Discursive vs cognitive psychology

Answer 4

Traditional social cognition approach: people as information processors.
Discursive psychology ‘anti-cognitivist’ - people’s discursive practices.
Cognitivism:
1. Internal mental entities determine social action.
2. Examples are attitudes, thoughts, emotions, attributions, stereotypes.
3. Language and social action as merely transparent media to get to their inner entities.
DP:
1. Language use: moulding and creative force of the social world.
2. Internal states: not trying to look inside people’s heads for them, instead what’s going on when people start talking about their mental states>

Question 4

Example of DP: persuasion in interaction (Huma et al. 2019, 2020)

Answer 4

Persuasion as attitude change:
Classic approach.
Persuasion = via information-processing mechanisms which produce change of attitude.
e.g. elm and hsm.

Role of language:
Persuasive messages:
- designed by researchers (participants don’t get to persuade).
- Stripped of the features of real talk.
Participants replies:
- Measured via likertscale questions (dont get to answer how they’de like).
Language treated as just a tool for transmitting messages for cognitive processing rather than as in naturally occurring interaction.

Role of interaction
Traditional approach: individualistic.
Focuses on people’s cognitive processes.
Ignores interaction between participants.

Focused on cold calls by salesperson to ‘prospect’
Analysis shows how prospects prevents from refusing to meet.
Mostly by design of turn-talking so space to respond is restrictied, consent to meeting is bypassed, and meeting frame as already accepted.

Question 5

Examples of DP: radio talk (Horowitz and Kilby, 2019)

Answer 5

Interested in how people talk on radio phone-in shows.
Interested in when, how and to what effect people talk about thinking.
Wanted to see what talking about thinking does in radio phone-in show talk.
Identified three themes/three main ways that thinking was being used:
1. Setting an intersubjective agenda.
2. Doing opinion.
3. Managing facts.

1. Setting an intersubjective agenda
   One place you repeadly saw think mentioned was by show hosts when they invited people to take part in the shown and introduces/re-introduced called to the air.

Focus on subjectivity
Hosts’ talk of thinking focuses the shows on subjectivity, i.e. there isnt just one answer, one opinion, one trueth.
So when hosts talk about thinking, they set up a space where people are expected to think idfferently so what you think matters.

3. Managing facts
   A straightforward way ‘I think’ used to manage facts.
   Express uncertainty about some facts you are stating.
   Distances speaker one step from the fact.

Concluding
A more nauced way that facts are managed using think is when people do concluding.
Facts are presented as what grounds the speakers subjective position. Their subjectivity is an upshot of the facts theyve just stated.
This manages the potentially dodgy nature of coming off as subjective.
It is my opinion, but its thoroughly grounded by objective fact.