Discourse or Cognition: An Introduction to Discursive Psychology

Post-Structuralism in Group Theory and Practice

“…Post-Structuralism rejects structuralism's claim that underlying explanatory structures live in, and issue from, the minds of human beings (McLaughlin, 2009;Potter, 2000). In other words, the ideas that make up the explanatory structures are not contained within human skulls, but are available in various kinds of talk and texts, that is, discourse; and, since the words were here prior to the people uttering them, people do not produce discourse as much as they locate themselves within it (Edwards, 1997(Edwards, , 2010Potter & Edwards, 2003).…”

“…Second, they argue for taking careful note of group members' talk and text (i.e., discourse) as a practical activity (Potter, 2000(Potter, , 2010. Third, they assert that group action must be grasped on its own terms through careful study of specific occasions and instances of people performing words-in-action rather than as an idealized, abstract pursuit (Austin, 1962;McLaughlin, 2009;Perakyla, Antaki, Vehvilainen, & Leudar, 2008;Psathas, 1995).…”

“…In other words, the ideas that make up the explanatory structures are not contained within human skulls, but are available in various kinds of talk and texts, that is, discourse; and, since the words were here prior to the people uttering them, people do not produce discourse as much as they locate themselves within it (Edwards, 1997(Edwards, , 2010Potter & Edwards, 2003). This rejection leads away from 4 McLaughlin a focus on the private realm of the mind and instead toward the practical ways people actually use discourse; instead of looking at language as a private, cognitive process, it is seen as a public activity and attended to as such (McLaughlin, 2009;Perakyla et al, 2008;Potter, 1996). Thus, a post-structuralist view likely alters the way in which group theory and practice might proceed, with less stress on what group members' talk means in terms of some covert theoretical structure, and more stress on what the talk is actually doing in terms of its practical activity (Potter, 1996(Potter, , 2000.…”

“…Repeatedly resorting to this repertoire may very likely lead to negative reactions from other members. A group facilitator might choose to subtly counter this member's utterances, by, for instance, making their interactional business more explicit, by sidelining them with countering utterances, or by parsing them to identify the forms of relating they encourage and discourage, and who wins and who loses as a result (McLaughlin, 2009;Potter, 2010;Sampson, 1993). Once again, a focus on interpretive repertoires requires a detailed surveillance on exactly how group members fashion their utterances in pursuit of whatever social practice they are a part (Edwards, 1997;Potter, 1996).…”

“…Theoretically a post-structural approach to group theory and practice attends to how group members compose their utterances to accomplish interactional business (McLaughlin, 2009). For example, a group member who says to another group member that "everyone knows that you're a liar," employs several compositional moves to build the credibility of such an utterance to do its work.…”