From McGuiniss, 1983: 168 discourse analysis a comparative and critical introduction by robin wooffitt

testimony to the senate committee investigating the ‘Watergate’ scandal explores the contextualised and pragmatic work embedded in memory formulations Edwards and Potter, 1992: 30–53. Their analysis was prompted by an earlier study by Ulric Neisser, a cogni- tive psychologist who had been trying to broaden the scope of psychological research on memory to take account of ecologically valid data, such as mem- ories of real events for example, Neisser, 1982; Neisser and Harsch, 1992; Neisser and Winograd, 1988. The publication of the transcripts of the senate hearings allowed Neisser to investigate the extent to which Dean’s recall, noted at the time for its extensiveness and apparent detail, was accurate. He claimed to have identified three kinds of memory functioning in Dean’s testi- mony: verbatim, gist and repisodic memory. Neisser argued that repisodic memory works to preserve the key themes of an event or discussion while allowing for errors. In short, it allowed Dean to be telling the truth while ostensibly getting things wrong Neisser, 1981. While welcoming Neisser’s attempt to move the study of memory beyond the laboratory, Edwards and Potter argued that his analysis was problematic because it confused accounting practices with memory processes. Aspects of the testimony which Neisser had seen as evidence of good recall, bad recall or a certain type of recall verbatim, gist, repisodic were ways of managing Dean’s accountability in a courtroom setting; they were methods for dealing with actual or implied attributions of guilt, and so on. So, for example, producing the gist of a prior event or conversation allows the speaker to perform delicate descrip- tive operations: they can preserve, delete or transform aspects of the prior talk to attend to current interactional purposes Heritage and Watson, 1979. Moreover, verbatim recall of prior conversation is a rhetorical strategy through which the speaker is able to manage the evidential value of their claims Goffman, 1981; Holt, 1996; Wooffitt, 1992. Thus what Neisser interpreted as expressions of the workings of memory were discursive practices oriented to inferential tasks generated in the context of official hearings to identify responsibility and blame for illegal activities see also Molotch and Boden, 1985. Dean was noted for his good memory: he drew attention to it at various points in the hearings, and on occasions was able to give detailed accounts of past events. Edwards and Potter 1992 select some illustrative examples from Neisser’s 1981 paper, which serve to show that Dean presented himself as … someone with a virtually direct perceptual access to the original events: ‘you know the way there are two chairs at the side of the President’s desk … on the left hand chair Mr. Haldeman was sitting’ [Neisser] 1981: 11; ‘I can very vividly recall the way he sort of rolled his chair back from the desk and leaned over to Mr. Haldeman and said “A million dollars is no problem” ’. 1981: 18, cited in Edwards and Potter, 1992: 42 However, Edwards and Potter argue that we must not take Dean’s pronounce- ments on his own memory abilities as literal or neutral statements as they are 118 CONVERSATION ANALYSIS AND DISCOURSE ANALYSIS produced for rhetorical ends, to attend to matters of culpability and blame. See also Lynch and Bogen, 1998, for an analysis of the strategic orientation of Oliver North’s accounts of his memory capabilities in his testimony to the Iran–Contra hearings. Moreover, the vivid narrative detail provided by Dean may be produced as a device to warrant the claim to have exceptional recall, thus strengthening any specific version of events. In their study of the various debates following a con- troversial off-the-record briefing by the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Potter and Edwards noted that the grounds for a particular version of what really happened could be established through detailed memory narratives. The follow- ing extract comes from one of the journalist’s accounts of the disputed meeting. Mr Lawson the Chancellor sat in an armchair in one corner, next to a window looking over the garden of No. 11 Downing Street.The Press Secretary, Mr John Gieve, hovered by the door. The rest of us, notebooks in our laps, perched on chairs and sofas in a circle around the Chancellor. It was 10.15 on the morning of Friday 4 November … . Potter and Edwards, 1990: 419 The journalist’s account contains what Potter and Edwards call ‘collateral information’ 1990: 419; his recall thus seems fresh and vivid. The provision of collateral detail thus advances and substantiates a claim to have veridical recall, which in turn grounds the authority of that particular version of what really happened. See also Bell and Loftus, 1989, on the power of ostensibly ‘trivial’ information in courtroom testimony. Neisser treated this kind of collateral detail in Dean’s testimony as an expression of particular memory processes. However, if we take account of the context in which it was produced – an official, governmental hearing to determine knowledge of and involvement in the President’s wrongdoings – we can see that it establishes the grounds for the credibility of Dean’s version of events. The upshot is that rememberings are social actions enmeshed in and built with respect to inferential concerns. In the senate hearing at which Dean gave his testimony, and in the dispute about what was really said at an off-the- record ministerial briefing with political journalists, matters of truth and responsibility were of paramount concern: the reputations of public figures – and possibly their careers – were at stake. Detailed narratives not only worked to provide vivid depictions of contested events, but established the authority of those versions. See also Locke and Edwards’ 2003 study of Bill Clinton’s testimony to the Grand Jury investigating his relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. We can now return to the extract 6.2 from the interview with Captain MacDonald in which he reports the moment when he heard that he was suspected of murdering his wife and two children. I was standing in line getting food, and I had just gotten through the cash register area and was beginning to sit down, when they had a news bulletin DISCURSIVE PSYCHOLOGY 119