is comparatively easy to address issues such as sentence structure. It is much harder, however, to anticipate the subtle interactional matters which are
addressed in language use; and it is even more difficult to try to anticipate the ways in which such issues may be negotiated in the fine detail of utterance
design. This is not the approach of the work we discussed earlier, which emphasises empirical investigation of the ways in which the relevance of
psychological vocabularies is invoked with respect to specific interactional activities in naturally occurring real-life data.
Harré’s work is important because it challenges many of the assumptions which inform not only dominant perspectives in psychology, but also common
sense thinking as well. However, because it offers a form of logical or concep- tual analysis, it is less powerful than those discursive psychological studies
which develop analytic claims which are grounded in the inspection of real- life data Potter and Edwards, 2003.
Finally, Billig’s rhetorical psychological approach has many features in common with discursive psychology. Indeed, in some of the literature, rhetor-
ical psychology and discursive psychology seemed to be used synonymously, for example, Billig, 2001b; Wiggins, 2001. For example, he rejects the assump-
tions that talk merely expresses inner thought or represents the operation of determinant cognitive events. We saw the following quote in the previous
chapter, but it is equally appropriate and useful here.
Cognitive psychologists have assumed that thinking is a mysterious process, lying behind outward behaviour. However, the response and counter
response of conversation is too quick for it to be the outward manifestation of the ‘real’ processes of thought. The remarks are the thoughts: one need
not search for something extra, as if there is always something lying behind the words, which we should call the ‘thought’. Billig, 2001b: 215
Billig asks that we focus on discourse because it seems intuitively implausible that the complexity and delicacy of interactional procedures should be gener-
ated by corresponding mental processes. Moreover, as rhetorical psychology argues very strongly, discourse is a form of argumentation. While we may not
wish to endorse such a narrow view of interaction it has the benefit of draw- ing attention to the way language is itself the site in which we can explore
psychological issues such as the causal attributions, the production of recollections, and the relevance of identity.
Discursive psychology and conversation analysis
Consider the studies we discussed to illustrate discursive psychology: the use of ‘I think’ prefaces to statements or accounts, ‘I dunno’ lack of knowledge
claims, and the ways in which recollections can be formulated. It was apparent
128 CONVERSATION ANALYSIS AND DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
that there was a strong CA influence. We used data from CA studies, and considered the kinds of inferential matters addressed through descriptions of
memories and examined the use of a cognitive vocabulary in specific interac- tional episodes. There would seem to be clear links between CA and discursive
psychology, and in this section we shall explore this relationship in more detail.
It is clear that CA is a major resource for discursive psychology. In a recent review of discursive psychology, Potter 2000 identifies Sacks’ work, and the
form of analysis he began, as one of the most significant influences in the emergence of post-cognitive psychology. It has provided a cumulative body of
knowledge about the organisation of interaction in mundane settings and in institutional contexts. Discursive psychologists have found these to be a valu-
able resource; for example, it allows them to ground their own analytic claims in the findings from a burgeoning body of research Edwards, 1995b. For
example, Potter and Hepburn are conducting a discursive psychological study of interaction in calls to a child protection helpline. Their analyses draw upon
and build from earlier CA studies of mundane telephone interaction, and studies of ‘institutional’ calls; such as 999911 calls to emergency services Potter
and Hepburn, 2003. Another feature of Potter and Heburn’s study is that it simultaneously addresses research issues in CA and discursive psychology.
Thus they analyse the sequential organisation of early turns in calls to the helpline, while at the same time attending to the kinds of psychological busi-
ness which informs the participants’ sequentially organised conduct. Similarly, Wiggin’s 2002 study of gustatory ‘mmms’ – offered as appreciations of food
at meal times – is a contribution to the discursive psychological investigation of the interactional organisation of evaluations and opinions, while at the same
time contributing to the CA literature on non-lexical particles such as ‘mm hm’ and ‘uh huh’ Jefferson, 1984a; Schegloff, 1981.
While discursive psychologists have developed lines of empirical inquiry which overlap with those in conversation analytic studies, their work has
retained a solid constructionist edge, treating discourse as the site in which the relevance and properties of what are traditionally taken to be mental pheno-
mena are constituted and negotiated. Paradoxically, this is in contrast to the work of some conversation analysts who take a much more traditional posi-
tion on the relationship between cognitive phenomena and socially organised interactional practices. See, for example, the contributions by Drew, Pomerantz
and Heritage in the collection edited by te Molder and Potter, 2005. The con- versation analytic position on the relationship between mental processes
and linguistic action can, then, resemble more the perspective common to the tradition of North American communication research for example, Tracy,
1991.
CA has developed a distinctive methodological procedure and discursive psychologists have often adopted these in their own projects. Indeed, on occa-
sions it would seem that the methodology of discursive psychology is hard to distinguish from that of CA. For example, the following quote comes from
DISCURSIVE PSYCHOLOGY 129
Potter and Edward’s 2003 debate with Coulter 1999 about the epistemo- logical and empirical position of discursive psychology.
Discursive psychology works through collections of instances, the close study of deviant cases and a major focus on participant’s orientations.
Potter and Edwards, 2003: 178
As we have seen in earlier chapters, a distinctive feature of much CA research is that it seeks to identify particular interactional phenomena from close analy-
sis of a collection of instances. CA research also pays special attention to deviant cases in which there is a clear departure from an established pattern;
this is because participants’ utterances in these deviant cases will display their understanding of the significance of that departure, thereby providing the
analyst with a deeper understanding of the normative framework which underpins interaction. And perhaps the key feature which distinguishes CA
from other approaches to the study of language is that it is fundamentally concerned to investigate how participants themselves are making sense of
on-going interaction. A concern with participants’ orientations therefore informs all CA research. It would be possible, then, to replace the words
‘Discursive psychology’ with ‘Conversation analysis’ and have an accurate albeit partial description of CA methodology.
Perhaps the overlap between CA and discursive psychology is not surpris- ing: there are many CA studies which address concerns which were later to
inform discursive psychology, even if this is not an explicit focus of the research. We will consider three examples. In his first lecture, Sacks discussed
the following fragment of interaction taken from a corpus of calls to a suicide prevention centre.
6.10 From Sacks, 1992, vol. I: 3
A: this is Mr. Smith, may I help you B: I can’t hear you
A: This is Mr Smith B: Smith
B’s ‘I can’t hear you’ clearly implies that information offered by another speaker – a name – had not registered. This is a cognitive claim about the
speaker’s state of knowledge. But this is not a simple disclosure of a determi- nant cognitive reality. Sacks’ analysis shows how this turn in this sequence per-
forms delicate interactional work: it is a method by which to avoid giving a name where name giving is expected, without explicitly having to refuse to
give a name. In this, there are close parallels with discursive psychological studies of the way in which mental states are invoked with respect to specific
interactional tasks.
130 CONVERSATION ANALYSIS AND DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
Heritage 1984b has studied the use of the particle ‘oh’ in conversational interaction in a variety of sequentially organised activities, such as informings,
repair and displays of understanding. He found that it is used to exhibit that the speaker has undergone a change of state, for example, in response to being
informed of some state of affairs. However, he is not making the claim that this particle is a public display of some real change at a cognitive or mental level.
As he points out, there are occasions when informings occur but are not marked with ‘oh’ receipts. For example, in medical consultations and news
interviews there are occasions in which one participant informs another, but these kinds of interaction are distinctive because of the
absence of ‘oh’ parti- cles. This strongly suggests that its occurrence is constrained by, and oriented
to, the interactional contingencies of particular social contexts. Finally, Goodwin 1987 has studied the interactional basis of an instance of
‘forgetting’. His data come from a video and audio recording of a group of friends having dinner. He examines a sequence in which one of the group is
reporting on a television programme he has recently watched. While making this report, the speaker seems to forget momentarily the name of the show’s
host. Instead of treating this ostensible lapse in memory as an indication of a cognitive or psychological aberration, Goodwin investigates the ‘forgetting’ as
a display of ‘not remembering’, and focuses on its sequential placement to see what kinds of work it performs in that setting. His subsequent analysis reveals
that the spate of not remembering allows the speaker to warrant and facilitate the involvement of a co-participant in the telling of a story. It is, therefore,
interactionally organised.
These studies are significant because they show that ostensibly psychologi- cal phenomena – not being in possession of information, changes in the state
of one’s knowledge, forgetting a minor detail in a story – are grounded in particular activity sequences. And in this, they suggest a further way in which
CA can inform and enrich discursive psychological research.
Conversation analysis is centrally concerned to discover and explicate sequences of utterances: highly patterned ways of talking together in which
participants engage in a circumscribed set of interactional and inferential activ- ities. What is particularly useful to discursive psychology is that part of the
work of analysing sequences in interaction requires showing how they are inter- actionally produced: to show how participants’ orientation to the requirements
of that sequence inform their activities, and in so doing, ‘bring off’ or realise that sequence collaboratively. The ways in which utterances are designed, then,
will embody the participants’ tacit understanding of the normative and proce- dural properties of sequential organisation: that certain activities are appropri-
ately placed in specific positions. The discursive psychological investigation of the embeddedness of cognition in social life may then be enriched by close
attention to the ways in which participants can be shown to be orienting to the relevance of, and collaboratively producing, avowals to or invocations of cogni-
tive or psychological phenomena.
DISCURSIVE PSYCHOLOGY 131
To illustrate this, we will examine some features of interaction between members of the public and psychic practitioners: people who claim to have
access to paranormally derived knowledge, such as psychic powers, clairvoy- ance, the ability to discern information from tarot cards, or the power to
communicate with the spirit world Wooffitt, 2000, 2001b.
The sequential organisation of parapsychological cognition: a CA study in discursive psychology
It is well known that members of the public who consult mediums and psychics often believe they have been told information which the psychic could not have
known by the use of normal senses. They are convinced that the authenticity and accuracy of paranormal powers have been demonstrated. But what exactly, in
this case, constitutes proof of the psychic practitioners’ paranormal powers? Psychic practitioners have to demonstrate some form of paranormal
cognition. A CA-informed discursive psychology would ask then: what are the sequential
properties of those episodes associated with ostensibly successful demonstra- tions of parapsychological cognition? That is,
where in the structure of interac- tion in these settings do displays of a parapsychological mind occur?
A routine feature of the psychic practitioners’ discourse is the use of questions to initiate topics, or develop on-going topics, which then become,
even if only momentarily, the focus for both participants. Moreover, these questions embody or ‘hint at’ aspects of the sitter’s current circumstances, or
their future plans, information which should not be available to a stranger such as the psychic. In the extent to which they can establish that these
references to ostensibly private matters are correct or accurate, psychic prac- titioners provide evidence for, and, by implication, demonstrations of, their
access to paranormal sources of information. Instances such as these, which, from the psychics’ perspective, may be considered ‘successes’, routinely exhibit
a three turn structure Wooffitt, 2000, as follows:
T1 Psychic: a question embodying a claim about, or knowledge of, the sitter,
their circumstances, etc. T2 Sitter:
minimal confirmationacceptance T3 Psychic:
attribution of now-accepted information to paranormal source.
Consider the following instance which comes from a sitting between a mem- ber of the public and a psychic practitioner who is interpreting tarot cards.
6.11 Tarot reading Discussing S’s plans to travel after
graduating.
S: I graduate in June I’m probably going to work until
about february -so: jus’ . any old j ob
y’know. -RIght okay
right
132 CONVERSATION ANALYSIS AND DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
关 兴
P: and are you going to the states,
T1 .
S: yeah.
T2 P:
yea:h, c’z e I can see the old ehm: T3
. S:
Hh huh Hah ·h
P: statue of
liberty around you, S:
heh heh h e ·hhh P:
there you are, there’s contentment for the future.
S: oh go od
P: who’s pregnant around you?
T1
The question ‘and are you going to the states’ may be heard as displaying the psychic’s special knowledge that the sitter is indeed planning to visit the US.
Once this has been accepted it is retrospectively cast as having been derived from the tarot cards: the psychic’s utterance ‘c’z e I can see the old ehm: statue
of liberty around you,’ portrays her prior turn as a consequence of her para- normal ability to detect from the arrangement of cards a classic iconic repre-
sentation of the US, and interpret its relevance to the sitter. Moreover, the turn is initiated with a derivation of ‘because’, thus explicitly establishing that the
topic of her prior utterance was generated from the special powers claimed in her subsequent turn.
Once the attributive turn is complete, and the psychic has made a general remark about the sitter’s future contentment, she initiates another topic with
the question ‘who’s pregnant around you?’ which, should it be accepted by the sitter, would project the relevance of another attributive turn and further
demonstration of special powers.
This three turn structure is a routine organisation of psychic sitter interac- tion in which the psychic elicits affirmative responses from the sitter. For
example:
6.12 Medium–sitter interaction
P: So spirit wants me to do a scan on your bo:dy, talk
about your health, so I’m going to do that okay? I’m going to do this for your health 0.8 Let’s see
what’s going on with you. ·hh number one thing is your
mother in spirit please? T1
0.2 S:
Yes T2
P: ’cause I have n-m y’r mother standing right over
T3 here,
·hh and she said I WANna TAlk to HEr and I want to speak to her because hh your mother has very
lou::d when she comes through. h she speaks with a in a very lou:d way a very uhm . y’understand
DISCURSIVE PSYCHOLOGY 133
兴 关
关 关
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
关 关
