Discursive Social Psychology: From Attitudes to Evaluative Practices

Abstract

This chapter reviews the major theoretical and methodological features of discursive social psychology, and illustrates the scope and nature of this approach through showing the way it can respecify the social psychology of attitudes. It reviews discourse research on attitude variability; it describes conversation analytic studies on the way evaluations are managed in interaction and shows how our understanding of political oratory can be improved; it discusses the way evaluations are bound up with broader, culturally defined, systems of discourse; it discusses the relation between assessments and factual accounts; and finally it shows how a discursive approach can rework notions of function, consistency, vested interest, and emotion.The aim of this chapter is to introduce a discursive approach to social psychology to people who are more familiar with the mainstream experimental social cognition tradition.After making some preliminary remarks about the history, aims and theory of discursive social psychology I will focus on what would traditionally be called the social psychology of attitudes. This topic has the virtue of being at the heart of social psychology for much of the century, and thus provides a familiar startpoint for anyone wishing to understand what is distinctive about the discursive approach, and how radical its respecification of traditional notions will be.

Knowledge and Discourse Matters

“…By locating psychology in language, it makes possible the direct study of the processes of thinking (Billig, 2001), contrasted with the traditional experimental method which by comparison is reduced to the study of secondary or indirect phenomena. This difference is significant: DP studies psychological phenomena as constructed in everyday talk and text, and as oriented to by both speaker and recipient (sometimes referred to as next turn proof), while conventional methods treat discourse as the means of accessing inner mental thought (Edwards and Potter, 1992 Potter) and how these connect to topics in social psychology (Potter, 1998a). Again, this contrasts with traditional methods which focus on why questions.…”

“…DP draws on ideas from discourse analysis, conversation analysis, rhetoric and ethnomethodology (Potter, 1998a;Potter and Edwards, 2003). It takes its theoretical and analytical origins in, for instance, the works of Gilbert and Mulkay (e.g., Mulkay and Gilbert, 1982) in sociology and their study of scientific knowledge and rhetoric (see Potter for a detailed account).…”

“…Other studies focus on gender (e.g., Charlebois, 2010;Potter and Edwards, 2003;Stokoe, 2012;Schegloff, 1997;Rhodes and Pullen, 2009), identity (e.g., Benwell and Stokoe, 2012;Locke and Edwards, 2003;Myers, 2010;Condor, 2000;Hobbs, 2003;Ainsworth and Hardy, 2004;Abell and Stokoe, 2001;Davies and Harré, 1990;Crane, 2012b;Rautajoki, 2012;Holmes, 2005;Bucholtz and Hall, 2005;Mieroop, 2005;Brown and Phua, 2011;Wetherell, 2001;Greatbatch, 2009;Gulich, 2003;Giles, 2006;Hutchby, 2001;Whittle, 2005), attitudes and evaluative practices (e.g., Wiggins and Potter, 2003;Potter, 1998a;Potter and Edwards, 2012), occupational roles and good practice (e.g., Marshall, 1994;Wasson, 2004;Svennevig, 2012b;Ford and Stickle, 2012;Housley and Smith, 2011;Nielsen, 2012;Holmes, 2005;Cromdal, Landqvist and Osvaldsson, 2012), and knowing as an interactional accomplishment (Lester and Paulus, 2011;Marra, Moore and Klimczak, 2004;Gulich;Paulus, 2007;…”

“…While Madsbjerg and his co-worker talk about hidden motivations that shape behaviour and which can be revealed through research, DP is solely concerned with social life as normative and rhetorical practice, rather than as the end result of an interaction of unspecified mental patterns and factors. (Potter, 1998a). Norms do not control actions, they are orientated to by individuals in their discourse.…”

“…Potter and Wetherell are credited with being the first to introduce DA to social psychology in the mid-1980s (Potter, 1998a), followed by their seminal book, Discourse and social psychology: beyond attitudes and behaviour (1987). Discursive Psychology was developed and formally introduced by Edwards and Potter in their 1992 publication of the same title.…”