Discursive psychology and feminism

Abstract

This appraisal highlights the productive engagement between feminism and discursive psychology (DP). It discusses some of the confluence and tensions between DP and feminism. The two share critical perspectives on science and psychology, a concern with prejudice, and have ideas in common about the constructed nature of social categories, such as gender. One difficulty arises from the relativism associated with the post-structural theoretical underpinnings of DP, which can be understood as politically paralyzing. Another problem comes from an endorsement of a conversation analytic mentality, where identity categories such as gender can only be legitimately used in an analysis when participants' orient to their relevance. The high-profile debates and literature in DP shows it has made a notable contribution to social psychology and its influence can also be found in other areas. A particular influence of DP highlighted in the present appraisal is on gender and language research.

Reopening the dialogue between the theory of social representations and discursive psychology for examining the construction and transformation of meaning in discourse and communication

“…Further developed in psychosocial directions (see Potter, 1996) for examining how people use language 'in their 'discourse' with each other' (Burr, 2015;p. 17;Weatherall, 2012a) these instruments provided 'an alternative methodological approach that could be used in place of the experiments and questionnaires that had been the mainstay of published psychological work at that point' (Wiggins & Potter, 2008, p. 74).…”

Choosing housemates and justifying age, gender, and ethnic discrimination

“…Gender inequalities also exist in contradictory and paradoxical ways (Wetherall, ) with normative pressures producing a more subtle form of sexism where overt discrimination against women is denied (Glick & Fiske, ; Sarrasin, Gabriel, & Gygax, ). Age is also a basis for discrimination but unlike race and sex, age changes over time and is therefore not an enduring characteristic.…”

Towards a discursive research agenda for organizational psychology

“…Psychology was criticized for its one-dimensional attachment to neo-positivist scientific models and for celebrating the methods and logics of the natural sciences. Even though the narrowly defined and positivist boundaries had expanded over the years, the 'traditional' discipline of psychology continued to be strongly associated with theories and methods that systematically excluded nonquantitative perspectives (Weatherall, 2012). Moreover, psychology was criticized for failing to consider ideological and political differences, and even for reproducing them, and for imperialistically imposing a heroic and phallocratic individualism on people and cultures across the world (Gergen and Davis, 1996).…”

“…Much of the success of Discourse and Social Psychology may be attributed to its setting out a clear and detailed vision of how research might be done (Potter, 2012) in terms of a systematic, empirical analysis of everyday recorded talk (Edwards, 2012). Especially by introducing and drawing on 'interpretative repertoires', which became a central tool for analysis, the authors investigated how people employed common-sense descriptions as rhetorical resources for explaining and preserving moral and social orders (see also Weatherall, 2012).…”