Paper structure

• How Discursive Psychology (DP) scholars define DP as part of discourse analysis, and the theoretical framework it endorses (i.e., social constructionism).

Wiggins (2017), five forms of discourse analysis and their theoretical and analytical differences. Yet they share some philosophical and epistemological underpinnings.

• The shades of DA/CA/DP approach – implicit meta-theoretical framework

Doing research is performative and a social action. As an approach, what it does has a lot to do with what it implicitly claims to be the case (theoretical level-social constructionism), and what its action implicitly takes on as the principles (not the best wording here) (meta-theoretical level-the shades and backgrounds)

A dodging attitude is not going to help DP to further develop beyond being an analytical approach.

Okay, we are going to step into the framed picture and breathe in what originally was a shadow and background and thus escape our consciousness (?) and sensation about DP. Also, what is the “real” metatheory is more than a power question. It directs to an ideal conversation action context we might not be able to reach but is always already assumed. Example.

I encourage people to stay with the part as long as they wish to make sense of the meta-theoretical framework. In an extreme sense, people don’t have to read any more if you don’t agree with this (this doesn’t make sense)

• What DP does

DP requires analysts to experience meaning as a virtual participant, the social and performative nature of discourses DP foregrounds requires researchers to take such a position to understand the discourses and experience meaning, the analytical process is the process of understanding.

Introducing the idea of adopting a third-person performative position in doing (understanding patterns and explicating them as cultural typification)

Discourses are social reality. Hammersley (2003) critiques that DP presumes the argumentative nature of participants shown in discourses, as a matter of fact, DP would say that no matter what intention participants have or what they may be thinking, what we could know encompasses in discourse already, including what we call participants’ intentionality. (reference...)

• What DP scholars explain what DP does (reference at least a couple of DP scholars) is often unfinished thoughts

For one thing, when analysts proceed to explicate what is found for further analysis, practices or patterns are analytically known and are not interested in participants’ intentionality or outside of what people desire to express (the expressive action). The practices are validated through the unfolding of the discourse. For example, an invitation is analytically known as an invitation because the other person treats it as an invitation. What happens after the invitation is only possible after it is recognized as an invitation. The analytical known-ness can be reformulated as practices that are accessible to and remain consistent across multiple accesses and multiple perspectives from different subject positions. This constitutes the foundation of DP studies’ validity. What can be explicated is restricted within the discourses – the social constructions, norms, etc.

These are really good points. It acknowledges that meaning is an intersubjective phenomenon instead of only a subjective phenomenon. The emphasis on a sequence study approach sheds light on social study approaches in general. Jeffersonian transcription makes implicit things more explicit

On the other hand, adopting a multi-perspectivist + single subjectivity framework (how people construct their versions of social reality through discourses) as is shown in Wetherell (2001)

This is problematic because know-how knowledge is more primordial and fundamental to cognitive forms of knowledge (pragmatism) à another really important theoretical underpinning to understand what I would say next.

Pave the way for the next point. When an inconsistency is identified and acknowledged, which one shall we account for? The know-how knowledge.

• Inconsistency in what DP does and what people explain DP does and the explanation guides their analytical practices

First, for DP, possibilities are not within the communication, as everybody enters into the communication and all implicitly grasp the possibilities of alternative subject positions[MD1] , but external to the communication (phrased as contingency and multi-perspectivist understanding) as every subject brings its own communication experience out as independent to each other and the collection of them all gives us a better understanding of the social reality (?). Thus, inter-subject within a subjectivity-first framework instead of intersubjective (reference: https://dorcasaty631.blogspot.com/2021/09/reaction-and-reflection-to-week-5.html)

Following it, meaning is understood as totally isolated from the speaker. Layered meaning, speaker’s intention, and hearer’s interpretation; missing the intentionality means missing that meaning is understood as from a general subject other.

Second, a mixture of taking on multiple possible performative subject positions and an observant third-person perspective

I.e., the first stage in analytical practice, a third-person performative attitude, the second stage when explaining what DP could offer (drawing upon the DP approach framework), moving to a more detached position, looking at the patterns and practices to further the analysis.

Third, where to locate patterns and practices in a communicative pragmatic framework (cultural typification), and how DP treats out-of-discourse themes such as power, norms, self, participants’ gender, race, age, etc.

DP does not have an explicit account of the questions listed above. At the same time, CA has discussed some of the possibilities as an indirect answer.

• According to CA theoretical understanding, they are there, but they are investigated only when they are important to the participants through discourses (Edwards, 1998) (doing discourse analysis, chapter 9). 0902 week 2 reading

• Patterns can be teased out

Something that is distinctive about the social practices (like the act of inviting and the act of declining)

We map out the patterns and characters and identify something as a deviation

What happens after the affirmation is only possible after it is being affirmed (the idea of “occasioned”)

For example, norms:

Norms embedded in the practices (Norms should be understood as beyond being script-like)

Only investigate when they are analytically known as discourses show them.

How to perceive deviation (beyond testifying the practices, but opens a door to understanding the ability to say no and understanding and experiencing no)

Another example is self (doing discourse analysis, chapter 9). What is analytically known is the subject position, and only when participants draw upon them through discourses.

“Self has no content; it is a structural feature. It is not simply manifested as discourse but constituted in discourse. First-person discursive practices express (vs. reflect) Self through indexing our sayings as ours. Sabat and Harro applied these ideas in their analysis of clinical material (interviews and conversations) involving three patients with Alzheimer's disease.” (p. 150)

• Connection and/or expansion are needed if following what DP does (Hegel, Corcoran’s idea of Shotter and V can be a pathway)

Drawing upon Bakhtin’s idea of the rational Other, Habermas’s generalized other position

Drawing upon Shotter’s idea of “”, Potter (2010) argues that it’s because of our moral commitment and responsibility that we choose to be faithful only to analytically known practices.

è In a Hegelian framework, the beautiful paradox is a stage, and it can be superseded by an organic integration of form and content, of the goal (presence of moral engagement) and the way of achieving a goal (absence of moral engagement).

Drawing upon Chouliaraki’s idea of as if, Hegel and Brandom’s way of understanding “representations” internal to the word.

Also, what DP illustrates is cultural typification – what it is, what it is important, and what people can do if they want to find more

It can be beneficial to locate the DP approach in a meaningful field analytical approach, and the DP approach can shed light on

• Concluding notes: Acknowledgement of drawing upon Hegel and Habermas to rich the unfished theorizing work DP currently draws upon + possible and necessary changes (only when needed)