Discursive psychology sees both the person
and their social world as constituted
through discourse and social practices.
This challenges the essentialist idea that
human personhood is an interior fixed, an
ongoing phenomenon,
or that social reality in some ways out there waiting to be discovered
and described prior to and independent of
our construction of practises.
Discursive psychology methodology is qualitative,
looking at how the social world of objects and events
is constituted in talk
and text
and how social identities are
created using existing cultural discourses.
Discursive psychology methods
involve the
analysis of different kinds of discourse resources
and discourse processes.
This means that a range of discourse data is used in practice
depending on the researcher’s
interests.
Discourse methods can be applied to every day conversations,
workplace
interactions, interviews
and text such as newspaper reports.
Discourse processes
refers to the ways in which people use the
discourse resources that are available in
their culture.
When analysing reports and accounts, the focus is on
what people say and how they say it.
That is what actions are performed.
The question for discourse psychology researchers is:
what cultural discourse resources
are being used by speakers
and how they are being used?
What is being accomplished
and how is personhood
and social reality being constituted through the
talk or text?
These emerge in the analysis by focusing
on interpretive repertoires, subject positions
and ideological dilemmas.
The discursive psychology method
is not concerned
with the study of interior processes
such as intentions, feelings, cognitions
or motives.
