Introduction to Special Issue on Discursive Psychology

ABSTRACT

Since its inception in 1987, Discursive Psychology (DP) has developed both methodologically, for instance by drawing closer to Conversation Analysis, and theoretically, by building a body of knowledge which outlines the discursive accomplishment of mind-world relations. One of DP’s contributions to psychology consists in the respecification of mainstream topics (like attitudes, identity, memory, and emotions). This editorial outlines the meta-theoretical underpinnings of DP’s respecification programme. The empirical studies comprised in this special issue showcase state-of-the art discursive psychological research that respecifies core psychological topics: attitudes, persuasion, emotions, agency, personality, uncertainty, and socialisation. The editorial also delineates the place of DP within contemporary psychological science and reviews DP’s theoretical and methodological contributions to key matters including open science, research ethics, and integrity and rigour in qualitative research. The special issue concludes with an insightful commentary by Sally Wiggins on DP’s relationship with mainstream psychology.

KEYWORDS:

• discursive psychology
• conversation analysis
• respecification
• inductive psychological research
• epistemology
• methodology

Acknowledgement

The authors are grateful to Mirko Demasi for his helpful comments on a draft version of this editorial.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. For example, the CallFriend corpora (several languages) set up by the Linguistic Data Consortium or the Archiv für Gesprochenes Deutsch (German language) set up by the Leibniz Institut für Deustche Sprache.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Bogdana Huma

Bogdana Huma is a lecturer at York St John University where she teaches social psychology and qualitative research methods. Her research uses discursive psychology and conversation analysis to examine persuasion and resistance ‘in the wild’.

Marc Alexander

Marc Alexander is a Research Fellow at Loughborough University, where he uses discursive psychology and conversation analysis to examine helpline calls from people in housing crisis. He is currently interested in the interactional function of  (non)lexical emotion displays.

Elizabeth Stokoe

Elizabeth Stokoe is Professor of Social Interaction at Loughborough University. She uses conversation analysis as the basis for understanding effective communicative practice across many institutional settings, and developed the Conversation Analytic Role-play Method to turn findings into training.

Cristian Tileaga

Cristian Tileaga is a member of the Centre for Research in Communication and Culture at Loughborough University. He is the author of Representing Communism after the Fall: Discourse, Memory and Historical Redress (Palgrave, 2018) and The Nature of Prejudice: Society, Discrimination and Moral Exclusion (Routledge, 2015). He is also co-author (with Elizabeth Stokoe) of Discursive Psychology: Classic and Contemporary Issues (Routledge, 2015).