Tarot reading Discussing S’s plans to travel after

More interesting, perhaps, the focus on sequential analysis may generate new topics for discursive psychological research. An understanding of the expectations about actions in sequences, then, allows us to view activities accomplished in the turns as being sequentially implicated by earlier turns. This means that we may investigate not only turns in which a demonstration of the relevance of mind is explicitly produced, but also prior turns, which, in their design, facilitate the possibility of such an activity. The relevance of mental states – even ostensible parapsychological ones – may be empirically investigated as a collaborative concern distributed across turns as an oriented- to property of interactional episodes. Summary • There are varieties of discourse analysis. While it is most conventionally associated with the work of Edwards and Potter, the term is also associ- ated with the more conceptual form of analysis offered by Harré, and the more critical approaches offered by Billig and Parker. • There is considerable methodological overlap between Edwards and Potter’s formulation of discursive psychology and conversation analysis; and some early conversation analytic studies explored topics similar to those examined in discursive psychology. • The conversation analytic focus on the sequential organisation of talk-in- interaction offers a valuable resource for discursive psychologists seeking to identify the socially organised basis of avowals or invocations of mental phenomena. The relationship between cognitive processes and language use is a complex and controversial issue. Discursive psychology adopts a radical position, in that it treats discourse as the proper object of study for psychology; the brain is simply the biological stuff which underpins complex social activities. This inverts the traditional view in cognitive psychology which sees cognitive struc- tures as the proper object of study, and which regards social conduct as the epiphenomena of these determinate mental processes Edwards and Potter, 1995. However, it should be stressed that the discursive psychological posi- tion is not shared by all language researchers: many still subscribe to the view that it is necessary and profitable to explore links between cognitive processes and communicative competencies. A neat summary of some of these arguments can be found in van Dijk 1996. 136 CONVERSATION ANALYSIS AND DISCOURSE ANALYSIS 7 Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis In this chapter we will consider approaches to the analysis of discourse and communication which are markedly different from conversation analysis, dis- course analysis and discursive psychology, in terms of both methodology and substantive focus. First, we will discuss critical discourse analysis CDA, which has its roots in linguistics and sociolinguistics. Then we will assess a form of discourse analysis which emerged as a critical movement primarily within European social psychology, and which is influenced by the work of Michel Foucault among others; this can be termed Foucauldian discourse analysis FDA or the analysis of discourses, for reasons which will become clear. However, if CDA and FDA are so different from CA, why do we include them in this book which so far has focused on the close relationship between CA, dis- course analysis and discursive psychology? Both approaches are distinguished and established intellectual traditions. They offer rich and stimulating empirical accounts of the role of language in contemporary society. For these reasons alone it is important to provide a flavour of their theoretical orientations and empirical research, and to map their broader contribution to the study of discourse and interaction. But more important, both critical and Foucauldian discourse analysis present a set of challenges to CA, in that they articulate an alternative approach to the study of interaction. A discussion of critical and Foucauldian discourse analysis allows us to outline some of the key areas of disagreement. Critical discourse analysis Critical discourse analysis is associated with researchers such as Norman Fairclough, Teun A. van Dijk and Ruth Wodak. Broadly put, it is concerned to analyse how social and political inequalities are manifest in and reproduced through discourse. In this section I will describe the general methodological and substantive orientation of CDA research. It is important to stress from the outset, however, that there is no one way of doing CDA. Unlike conversation