became marginalised. They were felt to have a limited use, perhaps as a way of guiding experimental design J.B. Rhine, 1948, or as a way of indicating
broad features of the way psi worked L. Rhine, 1981. The reluctance of parapsychologists to study reports of spontaneous experiences reflects a
suspicion about their evidential value. Even if it is assumed that experients are not deliberately fabricating stories, there is still a sense that the value of
accounts is diminished by the possibility of unconscious distortion, the vagaries of memory, the experient’s emotional involvement in the experience, and so on
for example, see West, 1948: 265; and Pekala and Cardena, 2000. Ultimately, then, parapsychologists are wary of accounts of paranormal experiences, viewing
them as broadly unreliable records of ‘what really happened’.
A CA-informed perspective offers a very different kind of position alto- gether. Drawing from a range of arguments in philosophy and the social
sciences, it is assumed that language does not operate like a mirror of reality: ‘[e]xperience does not and cannot
determine its expression in language’ Yamane, 2000: 177; original italics. This in turn invites us to ask: if accounts
are not determined by the experience, what communicative and pragmatic concerns
do inform the ways accounts are organised? A CA-informed analysis reveals some recurrent features in the structure and
design of accounts of spontaneous paranormal experiences. There is a descrip- tive device which can be used by speakers to demonstrate their ‘ordinariness’
Wooffitt, 1992. When describing the onset of a particular paranormal episode, speakers regularly report what they were doing at the time. These reports have
similar properties, in that they take the form ‘I was just doing X … when Y’. In the following extract, for example, the speaker is reporting an apparition of
her recently deceased husband, which occurred during his military funeral service.
5.6 From Wooffitt, 1992: 123–4
1 S: an’ I went in there . er:m w- with my mother in law
2 and uhm: .4 friends that were with me
3 1.3
4 X
·hhh . and I was just looking at the coffin 5
Y and there was David standing there .3
6 he was in Blues
7 1
8 ·hh he wasn’t wearing his hat
9 his hat was on the coffin
10 and he was there
Here the ‘I was just doing X’ component is ‘I was just looking at the coffin’; and the ‘ … when Y’ component is the report of the apparition ‘and there was
David standing there’. The ‘X’ component is constructed from a report of an utterly mundane activity: ‘just looking’. This is not unusual: ‘X’ component
PERSUASION AND AUTHORITY 105
formulations are routinely used to depict distinctly mundane activities or locations; here are some other cases.
5.7 From Wooffitt, 1992: 117ff
‘an’ ah musta bin do:zin’ there or somethin’ …’ ‘as I was going through the doorway ...’
‘I was sitting in bed one night …’ ‘un’ driving fairly slowly …’
‘I were lookin’ out that way …’ ‘and we’re just sitting watching the tele …’
‘and I was sat on a chair …’ ‘I were just thinkin’ …’
‘we were all sat round . ehm in a room …’ ‘we were laid .7 in the front bedroom …’
These data indicate that speakers routinely use the ‘I was just doing X …’ component as a way of portraying the mundane and routine features of their
environment just prior to going on to report their first awareness of the particular paranormal event.
This addresses a variety of inferential concerns. First, by focusing on mundane, unexceptional activities, the speakers are able to demonstrate their
normality at the time of a paranormal event. Indeed, there is evidence that the speakers build their X formulations so that they emphasise or construct their
circumstances as a routine environment. In this study, some experiences occurred while speakers either were engaged in distinctly out of the ordinary
activities, or were in clearly unusual circumstances: for example, engaged on a lengthy meditation about the nature of God; or in a life threatening illness, or
in a state of grief following a bereavement. Yet in each case, the X formula- tions glossed the more evocative aspects of the speakers’ environment to
furnish a mundane and routine characterisation of what they were doing just prior to the onset of the experience see also Heritage and Watson, 1979.
Second, it established a contrastive organisation for the first introduction of the paranormal phenomenon into the narrative. Contrast structures have been
shown to be powerful persuasive devices in a range of discursive contexts Atkinson, 1984a, 1984b; Heritage and Greatbatch, 1986; Pinch and Clark,
1986; Smith, 1978. In the accounts of paranormal experiences, the report of the speakers’ mundane circumstances acts as a contrastive context which
serves to underline the strangeness of the particular incident.
The way in which accounts of this type are designed displays a lay or tacit logic which informs how we assess testimony from people reporting unusual
106 CONVERSATION ANALYSIS AND DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
or controversial events: we are less likely to give credence to accounts from people whose general assumptions about and perceptions of the world are
demonstrably unusual. The ‘X … when Y’ format is a device through which we can display that we are sensitive to, and orient our conduct towards, socially
organised conventions about what counts as normal in the world. It establishes our social competence, in that it exhibits our understanding of, and commit-
ment to, what counts as an appropriate response to truly unusual experiences. And establishing one’s own normality and social competence is a central
feature of warranting the factual basis of our claims.
This kind of approach to the study of reports of subjective paranormal experiences has numerous advantages. First, a CA-informed analysis is neutral
as to the ultimate truth or falsity of the accounts; indeed, it seeks to explore how participants themselves address and establish the factual status of the
experience. This means that it offers a way of examining accounts which liber- ates parapsychologists from having to endorse or reject accounts of specific
experiences.
Because of its controversial nature, parapsychological work, and parapsy- chologists themselves, have been the subject of intense critical scrutiny by
sceptics and debunkers for example, Alcock, 1981, 1987, Hanlon, 1974; Kurtz, 1985; Zusne and Jones, 1989. The main thrust of the sceptics’ argu-
ments was that parapsychology was a pseudo-science: it had failed to produce cumulative and replicable evidence of the existence of psi. Moreover, it was
claimed that parapsychology had not developed sophisticated theories, either of the functioning of psi or how it might relate to established physical and
psychological principles. In their defence, parapsychologists claimed that their procedures were scientific, that experimental results consistently produced
statistically significant evidence of anomalous communication, and that theoret- ical advances were slow because of the limited number of full-time parapsy-
chologists employed in universities, and the relative lack of research funding compared to established psychological research see, for example, the argu-
ments put forward by Honorton, 1993, and Radin, 1997. Despite these counter arguments, parapsychology’s position in the scientific and academic
community is, at best, insecure Mauskopf and McVaugh, 1980. Consequently many parapsychologists have considered ways in which their discipline’s aca-
demic standing might be strengthened. One argument is to establish links with and draw from established disciplines, such as the social sciences White,
1985, 1990; Zingrone, 2002, thereby facilitating innovative research links, and refreshing the theoretical and methodological resources of parapsychol-
ogy. The use of conversation analysis to study accounts of paranormal experi- ences provides one example of the way in which parapsychology and the
social sciences could establish closer links Wooffitt, 1988, 1993. This would help secure parapsychology’s status as a legitimate scientific discipline, while
at the same time generating new interdisciplinary lines of inquiry Wooffitt, forthcoming.
PERSUASION AND AUTHORITY 107
Finally, detailed analysis of the communicative practices through which accounts are assembled allows us to explore the range of inferential matters
which are relevant when people present themselves as having experiences which are controversial and contested. It thereby affords a deeper under-
standing of the cultural and interpersonal consequences of paranormal expe- riences, their relationship to the experients’ sense of self, and insight to lay
standards of authority and reliability. All of this rich insight about the rela- tionship between culture, the individual and anomalous experiences is lost if we
merely treat accounts as more or less adequate mirrors of an external reality.
Implications for cognitive psychology: new approaches to the study of autobiographical memory
Consider the following report: the speaker is describing one of a series of violent encounters with a poltergeist, and introduces
the onset of this episode with an ‘I was just doing X … when Y’ formulation.
5.8 From Wooffitt, 1992: 117
1 S: anyway I got to the kitchen door an as ah ·hh
2 I had the teapot in my hand like this and I walked
3 through the kitchen door .5 ·hhh
4 X
as I was going through the doorway 5
.7 6
Y I was just . jammed against the doorpost . like
7 this with the teapot stihll stuhck
8 out in front of me
Continues
The speaker is not reporting something that was happening right at the time the account was being taped: it is a report of his
memory of the event. These kinds of memories are called autobiographical memories: recollec-
tions of events of personal significance. There has been a considerable amount of research in cognitive psychology on autobiographical memories. Much of
this has been directed at understanding the basic cognitive processes which underpin memory formation, storage and retrieval Brown and Kulik, 1977;
Conway, 1995, and the degree to which memory processes are prone to distortion or error McCloskey
et al, 1988; Neisser and Harsch, 1992; Neisser et al, 1996. But there are other reasons why psychologists are interested in
autobiographical memories. For example, it is thought that they offer insight as to the formation of the self: everyday memories are ‘some of the things of
which selves are made’ Barclay and DeCooke, 1988; see also Neisser and Fivush, 1994.
A recent development in this area has been an attempt to understand the functions of these memories as they occur in real-life settings. For example,
Pillemer 1992 argues that there has been too much emphasis upon examining
108 CONVERSATION ANALYSIS AND DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
the accuracy of autobiographical memories, and that the research agenda should be expanded to include memory functions hitherto not considered in
cognitive psychology, for example, their communicative functions. He suggests we need to consider some of the broader social contexts of memory sharing.
He notes that the simple act of telling of one’s own memories, and hearing those of others, performs functions beyond the mere transmission of informa-
tion. Pillemer cites Tenney’s 1989 study of the ways in which new parents inform friends of the birth of a child, which suggests that what gets reported
owes more to social and interactional norms rather than any memory of the events being reported. Pillemer argues that it is necessary to study the under-
lying norms which inform the ways we report memories, claiming that the ‘
grammar of memorial expression … has yet to be fully described’ Pillemer, 1992: 242; original italics.
Pillemer is just one of a number of cognitive psychologists who are pressing for a more sustained analysis of the ways in which memory formulations are
produced in discourse, and the kinds of functions they are designed to achieve. Given their overriding focus on the action orientation of language and inter-
action, conversation analysts and discourse analysts would appear to be well placed to contribute to, and indeed carry forwards, this work. For example,
Edwards and Potter 1992 have already made important contributions to debates in cognitive psychology, and conversation analysts have studied the
interactional basis of rememberings and forgettings Drew, 1989; Goodwin, 1987. But even just a cursory summary of the study of the ‘X … when Y’
formulations indicates that CA has much more to offer cognitive psychology. It offers a method for the analysis of the ways in which autobiographical
recollections of this type are produced in everyday discourse, and in more dis- tinctive contexts, such as research interviews. It shows that inferential matters
clearly inform the ways in which recollections are designed, for example, to attend to possible sceptical responses. This in turn begins to flesh out the inter-
est in the functions of memory sharings. Finally it reveals the ways in which speakers orient to expectations regarding ‘normal’ or ‘competent’ conduct,
thereby exposing the kinds of socially organised normative frameworks which underpin memory production. In this sense, CA-informed discourse research
can make a significant contribution to cognitive psychology’s understanding of the grammar of memorial expression in everyday contexts.
Implications for psychiatry: the normative basis of recognising delusional talk
Palmer 1997, 2000 has examined the discourse of people who have been diagnosed as having severe psychiatric problems. He shows how such
people routinely deviate from the conventions of interactional practice, for example, in the way they produce narratives or anecdotes, and shows how
these deviations are not addressed by the speakers as accountable or notice- able matters. He uses this analysis to suggest an interactional basis for the ways
PERSUASION AND AUTHORITY 109
