very she has to be
S: ye:s:.
P: heard, ·h and like this would not happen today
without her coming through for you. D’y’ un’erstand S:
’kay S:
Ye:s.
Extract 6.12 begins with a section from the psychic practitioner’s description of how the sitting will proceed. After this initial preamble, he produces a
question about the sitter’s mother. This has an interesting design in that it could be heard as a genuine question about the sitter’s mother, that is, it may be
equivalent to ‘has your mother passed on or is she still living?’; or it could be heard as a question which seeks confirmation of information already known to
the medium. The sitter’s minimal response does not disambiguate the prior turn, in that a simple ‘yes’ could be ‘a telling’ or ‘a confirmation’. The medium’s
next turn, however, reveals that he is in contact with the spirit of the sitter’s mother. Moreover, the psychic prefaces this turn with ‘ ’cause’; this establishes
that his prior turn was a consequence of, or an upshot of, information or events he is about to disclose in his current turn. This retrospectively characterises his
first turn as a question seeking confirmation of information already at hand. Also, it can now be inferred that the knowledge that the sitter’s mother has
died came from a paranormal source: the spirit of the mother herself.
The display of paranormal cognition, then, is sequentially ordered: it is in the third turn of the sequence where now-accepted claims about the sitter are
attributed to a paranormal source, and thus constitute evidence of paranormal cognitive abilities.
There is evidence in this sequence that both sitters and psychics orient to significance of the third turn. For example, the sitters’ affirmative responses
are predominantly minimal in design and speedily produced, thus facilitating as quickly as possible the onset of the turn in which the now-accepted infor-
mation is attributed to a paranormal source. But psychics too demonstrate an awareness of the inferential significance of third position attribution. For
example, in some instances, psychics do not move to the third turn after the sitter acceptanceconfirmation, but instead ask a second, related question, thus
temporarily delaying the onset of the third turn.
6.13 Medium–sitter interaction
1 P: hh AHrm I’am also he’s talking to me about
2 an anniversary, . I don’t know why:, . but he’s
3 mentioning the anniv- an anniversary here. h ah’ve-
4 some kind of anniversary. ah
d’no th’s a death
5 ANniversary,
6 0.2
7
T1a
P: ahr- a passing, an anniversary of a passing,
134 CONVERSATION ANALYSIS AND DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
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8 0.2
9 P: would you be aware of
this? 10
T2a S:
y:es, 11
T1b P: okay. and that’s his passing is it please?
12 T2
S: ye:s. 13
T3 P: because he’s talking about his anniversary of
14 his passing.
15 S: yes.
16 P: okay?
There are two utterances that stand as topic initiating questions: the first, ‘would you be aware of the anniversary of a death’, is met with a minimal
acceptance confirmation. However, instead of moving to the third turn, the psychic produces another related question, ‘and that’s his passing is it
please?’, which again receives minimal response. Only then does the psychic move to the third turn in which he identifies the spirit of the sitter’s husband
as the source of his knowledge of the anniversary. The turn after the sitter’s initial response is clearly not an attribution. However, this departure from the
sequence is not noted or topicalised by the sitter, as the psychic’s next utter- ance can be heard as recycling the first turn. Indeed, the sitter’s second mini-
mal response treats the second question in this way, thus reissuing the slot for the third turn.
The psychic is able to exploit the sitter’s orientation to the on-going rele- vance of the third turn. Note the difference between the two questions: the
first suggests that the psychic knows that the sitter ‘is aware of’ a relevant anniversary; the second, however, implies that the psychic knows the
identity of the person whose anniversary is being discussed. The consequent attribu-
tion of this upgraded proposal in the third turn thus provides a more con- vincing demonstration of parapsychological powers. It seems that the second,
stronger claim may be generated out of the sitter’s acceptanceconfirmation of an initial, weaker first turn. The psychic is able to produce a second first turn
where a third turn attribution might be expected because of the sitter’s orientation to the on-going relevance of the third turn.
Why are these sequential considerations significant for discursive psycho- logy? There are two issues. As Potter and Edwards 2003 point out, discursive
psychology is concerned to describe participants’ orientations to the relevance of psychological states and vocabulary. And one way to expose these orienta-
tions is to study how they inform the ways in which turns are designed with respect to the sequence they collaboratively produce. So in this sequence, it is
apparent that the minimal second turns are designed to facilitate the speedi- est possible onset of the third position turn. Moreover, it is clear that the first
position questions do not offer a paranormal source for the hinted-at infor- mation. These observations allow us to make strong claims about the partici-
pants’ orientation to the relevance of the parapsychological activity undertaken in the third sequential position.
DISCURSIVE PSYCHOLOGY 135
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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
