From Widdicombe and Wooffitt, 1995: 96–7
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
that Captain Jeffrey MacDonald, the Green Beret officer from Fort Bragg who six weeks earlier had claimed that his wife and children were brutally
beaten and stabbed by four hippies, was himself named chief suspect.
Matters of truth and responsibility are clearly relevant to individuals impli- cated in murder inquiries. It is no surprise, then, that we find MacDonald’s
recollection of first hearing that the police suspected him of murdering his family is vivid and sharp, as though the moment was indelibly burned into his
mind. How does this detailed account address the broader inferential implica- tions of being a murder suspect?
In the last chapter we discussed some of the descriptive resources through which accounts of personal paranormal experiences could be designed to miti-
gate possible sceptical responses. One device was characterised as ‘I was just doing X … when Y’, a format through which the speaker’s first awareness of the pheno-
menon was introduced into the narrative. Of course, this device is not restricted to accounts of paranormal experiences, but regularly occurs when people are
reporting extraordinary or traumatic events. MacDonald’s account of hearing that he was the police suspect is organised around the ‘X … then Y’ format:
X I was standing in line getting food, and I had just gotten through the cash
register area and was beginning to sit down, Y
when they had a news bulletin that Captain Jeffrey MacDonald …
A ‘just X … when Y’ formulation is a normalising device: X components are used to portray the speaker’s mundane activities at the time of events which
have personal significance. MacDonald is drawing on everyday communicative practices to establish his normality via reports of the routine aspects of his
environment. And establishing one’s orientation to culturally organised nor- mative requirements – behaving ‘normally’ – may be a matter of real concern
for people accused of serious crimes, regardless of their guilt or innocence.
Discursive psychology treats recollections as reportings oriented to inter- personal and inferential matter. To expose the pragmatic and rhetorical aspects
of memory formulations, we have examined instances taken from participants in disputes as to ‘what really happened’. Was the President implicated in ille-
gal activities? What was said at a meeting between a government minister and political journalists? Did MacDonald murder his family? In each case we have
seen how recollections of events are fashioned to address issues of blame and responsibility. Also, following Edwards’ and Potter’s arguments, we have exam-
ined the way that detailed recollection may be a way of warranting the author- ity of a particular version of what happened. These disputes are not everyday
events, but they illustrate a general point which is relevant to more mundane forms of interaction: ‘common sense’ or vernacular characterisations of osten-
sibly cognitive memory processes may be invoked and constructed with respect to specific inferential tasks. There is, then, a clear point of contact between
the concerns of discursive psychology and the study of factual language.
120 CONVERSATION ANALYSIS AND DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
‘I dunno’
Initially, claims such as ‘I dunno’ seem unpromising targets for detailed attention because they seem to be a verbalised ‘shrug of the shoulders’, a simple
claim that we lack knowledge of some matter. Moreover, we might be tempted to regard these formulations as ‘uncertainty markers’, thus underlining the
cognitive psychological perspective that language use is ultimately a represen- tation of inner cognitive states or psychological processes.
The discourse view, however, treats ‘I dunno’ formulations as activities produced to address particular kinds of interpersonal work. In his study of
interaction in relationship counselling sessions, Edwards 1995a showed how ‘I don’t know’ was used by a man reporting his partner’s clothing to display a
lack of concern for the topic, when disclosing such close monitoring could itself be cited as warranting accusations of overbearing jealousy. ‘I don’t know’ or
‘I dunno’ formulations, then, can be used by speakers to display their uninterest in, or distance from, claims, opinions or descriptions which are in some way
sensitive, or which may be taken as the basis for sceptical or negative inferences about them.
Potter 1997 has illustrated some of the work being done by ‘I dunno’ for- mulations in his analysis of a now famous interview between a television
journalist, Martin Bashir, and Diana, Princess of Wales, shown on British tele- vision. It has been argued that this was an important moment in the history of
the monarchy in the United Kingdom Abell and Stokoe, 2001. Some years earlier Diana’s husband, Prince Charles, had given a television interview in
which he admitted infidelity; and it was widely believed that relations between the couple were frosty. Subsequently a biography of Diana was
published by Andrew Morton, which portrayed Diana in a more sympathetic light. This book, and Diana’s complicity in its writing, was regarded as a way
of getting back at Prince Charles.
During the interview, Bashir raises Diana’s motivation for her involvement in the writing of Morton’s book. Potter points out that in her responses Diana
is managing issues of stake and stake inoculation.