Readings WEDNESDAY July 31

ASSIGNMENT: The reflections should raise questions that you would like us to discuss in class.

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Price, E. Dissertation proposal: A discourse analysis of individualized transition planning meetings.

Johnston, J. Dissertation proposal: A discourse analysis of beginning teachers’ identity negotiation during a student-teaching internship. 

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Note: These readings were especially helpful for me to wrap my mind around what a DP/DA dissertation may look like. 

Questions for Price

1. On page 22, Price writes, "Identifying the dominant arguments, how they are constructed, who is making them, and how arguments are received or challenged can show how planning within IEP/ITP meetings is performed as a situated practice." Why the word argument instead of talk or discourse?

 

2. Price mentions ontological beliefs. I haven't seen this very frequently. Why was this important to Price to include? How are her ontological beliefs different from her epistemological beliefs? (p. 28)   

 
3. (I think I've asked this before, but I'm still not clear.) Do all DP studies use DA? (p. 28)

4. What was the thought behind choosing 7 of each type of meeting? "Seven IEP/ITP meetings where the student is present and seven IEP/ITP meetings where the student is not present will serve as one of the data sources for this study along with the IEP/ITP document and researcher generated field notes" (p. 43).

5. In the Researcher Journal section, what does it mean that the writing will be a form of inquiry? 
"The primary purpose is to recursively reflect in writing as a form of inquiry (Richardson, 1997)" (p. 46).  

 

6. What is the difference between observation notes and researcher journal? (p. 48).

 

7. I'm not sure I understand the quotation here. Is the analyzing of one's own work what is described as unfamiliar and uncomfortable? "This type of reflexivity 'that pushes toward an unfamiliar, towards the uncomfortable,' (Pillow, 2003, p. 192) will serve to make my version transparent as I analyze both the content and discursive functions of my journal" (p. 49). 

Quotations of Note from Price

 "...we are not well- informed about how transition planning is achieved through the social actions and functions of talk in meetings where students are present" (p. 21). 
"My research question is: How is transition planning achieved through talk in IEP/ITP meetings? More specifically, how does the talk within meetings where students are present compare to the talk within meetings where students are not present?" (p.23). 

I liked the examples of discourse on pages 36, 37, and 51. 

"My ongoing journal...will serve as one of the first levels of analysis because it will include the discursive practices that stand out to me within meetings and my initial impressions as I transcribe recordings immediately after meetings" (p.49). 

 

"Since I will be making analytical decisions about what to transcribe (Ochs, 1979; Jefferson, 2004), my transcription will serve as a construction of the meetings (Hammersley, 2010) and therefore a level of analysis. Conversational analysts (Hutchby & Wooffitt, 1988; Sacks, 1992; tenHave, 2007) have established that attention to micro-level talk, such as in-breaths, laughter, and pauses could be crucially important to social activities performed in talk" (p. 50). 

  "Therefore, although I will provide descriptions of the participants, the description need not be a “thick description” as is desirable in other types of qualitative research because claims will not be based in participant characteristics or the categories they might belong to, but rather claims will be based on language use" (p. 53). 

"The purpose of this study is to explore the discursive practices8 of students receiving special education services, caregivers, educational staff, school leaders, and other stakeholders participating in Individualized Education Program (IEP) meetings where Individualized Transition Planning (ITP) takes place in order to gain a greater understanding of how planning is constructed and negotiated through naturally occurring talk in an institutional setting"(p.22). 

 

Micro and Macro analysis. "Created in the 1960s by Harvey Sacks (1992) and his colleagues, Emmanuel Schegloff and Gail Jefferson, conversational analysis is concerned with the structure and function of “talk-in-interaction” at a micro level. Conversational analysis, described by tenHave (2007), is not concerned with “rushing to see in localized utterances the manifestation of presupposed cultural themes, ‘interpretive repertoires,’ or ‘discourses’ (p. 59) like types of Critical Discourse Analysis that look at macro level social and political discourses" (p. 28-29). 

  

 "DP and DA are emic in that analysts care about what the participant cares about (Edwards & Potter, 1992; Potter & Wetherell, 1987)"(p. 33).

 

 

Questions for Johnston 

2 part question: 1) What is micro refer to? 2) Is anticognitive in the newer research by Edwards,  Potter, or Wetherell? I felt like they went to great lengths not to use that term or even imply it. "The grounding of this study in DP brings both a micro-analytic method and an anticognitive stance" (p.20). 

I'm interested in the talk of people I supervise as well. I'd like to hear more detail about Johnston's decision. (This is my most important question.)

I didn't quite understand this argument: "Discursive studies often analyze data that has been recorded in the past to learn how conversation works" (p. 32).

I'd also like to hear about the decision to not use punctuation but to use correct spelling. "The initial transcript creation will function as a sort of intensive listening, and during that time, I will use standard spelling conventions; however, I will not include any punctuation or grammar conventions" (p. 33).

 
Quotations of Note from Johnston

"Though these changes may not occur knowingly (Goffman, 1959), people move among multiple identities that are temporary and malleable. It necessarily follows that, if identities are occasioned by various situations, a variety of identities are possible for each person" (p. 4) AND "Though becoming may apparently suggest that an identity will be a completed process at some point, Britzman (1992) claims that identity development is a “never completed” process; it is not a “place of arrival” (p. 42)" (p. 4) 


"The purpose of this proposed study is to investigate a discursive aspect of how beginning teachers negotiate their identities" (P. 18). 

"Speakers actively do something with each utterance whether intentionally or unintentionally, and the meaning of this action is constructed and made relevant in the interactional talk between speaker and hearer" (p. 21).


"So while, I have a personal understanding about identity and how I orient to it, I cannot make assumptions that my understanding reflects any cognitive reality for my participants" (p. 22). 


"I choose to take the position of a cognitive agnostic regarding the thoughts that may precede utterances (Hopper, 2005)" (p. 22). 


"Because the focus is on the impact of the discourse itself—and not the mental states the discourse reveals—whether a thought occurs before, after, or during speech and what that thought was are of no consequence" (p. 23).


"Unlike other qualitative work that attempts to thematize the data and produce findings from those themes, my coding will primarily be organizational" (p. 35). 

"While I do not intend to establish an a priori list, some topics that could appear frequently are classroom management, balancing teaching and being a student, teaching texts they have not read before, or interacting with mentor teachers. Coding the data by topic will aid me in looking for patterns of interaction around certain topics" (p.35). 

(Found in both papers) "In my approach to the data, I will attempt to stay aware of common failures of discourse analysis: (1) summarizing, (2) taking sides, (3) over quoting or under quoting, (4) reasoning circularly, (5) attributing to membership categories (6) spotting features (Antaki, Billig, Edwards, & Potter, 2003)" (p. 37). 

"Furthermore, my presence at the meeting locates me in the data" (p. 38). 

"Though I tried to position myself as a more competent peer (Miller Marsh, 2003), no matter how relaxed an atmosphere I tried to create, the meetings were still the result of institutional roles, and as such, the talk that takes place in them is institutional talk (Benwell & Stokoe, 2006)" (p.39).

"As a graduate student with a focus on educating English teachers, I want this research to be relevant and specialized for English teacher educators, but there is no guarantee that English-specific issues will emerge from the data" (p.40) AND "However, because this study is fundamentally about beginning English teachers—the research questions, the participants, and the primary investigator all make it so—whatever the participants make relevant in their discourse is relevant to the field of beginning English teachers" (p. 41).
 

Readings MONDAY July 29

ASSIGNMENT: The reflections should 1) demonstrate that you have critically read the assigned readings; 2) raise questions that you would like us to discuss in class; 3) provide any update on your final paper focus.

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Potter & Wetherell (1987), Discourse and Social Psychology, pp. 94-187

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The remainder of this book was in 5 chapters.

• Chapter 5 was about the self.
• Chapter 6 was about membership categories.
• Chapter 7 was about interpretive repertoires (which made me think of my article critique). 
• Chapter 8 was a how to section on DA.
• Chapter 9 was a summary, a final argument, and ideas for future research using DA.

Each of the first three chapters detailed how social psychology traditionally approached each of those topics, then made the argument for why they felt DA was a better approach. Here is a table with the SP approaches and how the authors argued that DA was better.

Chapter and Topic	SP approach		But… DA is better because…
Ch. 5- self	Trait Theory	Led to role theory.	“Trait theory is highly asocial in its approach, it ignores the inconsistency in human behavior” (p. 97) In DA, the self is subjective depending on the context, construction, and function of the discourse. You can be lots of selves!
	Role Theory	“Individuals learn to ‘refer’ to their social groups and through a process of ‘social comparison’ adjust their identities” (p. 98).	While this is linked to social groups, people have a “true” role to play. It does not account for the variance in natural settings.
	Humanistic Theory	Is focused on finding the “authentic true self” (p. 100). There is a “basic self” that all humans have in common- and we should strive to find it (p. 100).	Once again- this theory does not explain the variation between and amongst people. It does offer that society influences the self, but that influence has to be stripped away to get to the real self.
Ch. 6- membership categories	Categories- similarities make groups	People put similar things into fixed groups or categories.	“…people will draw flexibly on preformed categories and construct the sense of categories as they talk” (p. 121). Natural discourse constructs categories that are not fixed. SP category work does not take into account the variability between people describing the same thing or an individual describing one thing with opposing terms. Categorization in research that attempts to decrease variability is an issue to DA researchers- “The problem here… is that consistency becomes an achievement of the researcher rather than a feature of discourse” (p. 123). *Note- this is VERY different than what I’ve learned in other Qual classes!
	Prototype categorization	Within categories, there is a perfect example of what fits in that category, and people use that prototype when deciding if a new thing fits into the category. There are “fuzzy sets” or, in other words, if a new thing has at least something in common with the prototype, it will get chunked into that category.
Ch. 7- interpretive repertoires	Social representation	“Social representations are seen as mental schemata or images which people use to make sense of the world and to communicate with each other” (p. 138). When people encounter new things, they anchor the thing in a representation that already exists, which eventually transforms into part of that representation. These representations are “consensually shared across a number of people” (p. 144).	DA uses interpretive repertoires instead. “Interpretive repertoires are recurrently used systems of terms used for characterizing and evaluating actions, events, and other phenomena” (p. 149). IRs can be competing viewpoints and “are used to solve problems [within discourse to account for inconsistencies or variability], but they also generate difficulties of their own” (p. 155). These difficulties are used to bolster analysis (variation is good!)

Chapter 8 was probably the most practical. In it, the authors described 10 steps for using DA. They were quick to note that these are linear steps and are just offered for guidance. Particularly, I appreciated the discussion of research questions, sample size, interviews and other documents, coding, and validation. I really like that DA/ DP uses discourse and how they keep the interpretive gap as small as possible by analyzing the "raw" data. I'm not completely sold on DP, but DA seems like I could adapt to my study. I believe (after I speak with the chair of my committee) that I may change my research questions to reflect a DA approach- broad questions related to construction and function. I've also made note about providing a context for teachers to have conversations about my research topic. This chapter provides a detailed description of what that could look like in DA. I especially like the part about including the interviewer's questions. In most qual interviews, the questions are removed and hidden in an appendix. I've never quite been comfortable with dividing the questions from the answers. Coding for DA also makes more sense- it seems more visible (even if you include an iterative map) than most research I've read. Finally, I don't think that any dissertation will pass defense without some solid validation. I can see using the 4 types outlined on p. 169 in combination with others from Yin and Merriam.

I enjoyed this book a lot more and feel myself "coming around" to DP and DA epistemology. (Not completely- I still envision using this as a hybrid with "regular" qual work.) I think that Potter and Wetherell made a less aggressive argument for DA, and I'm thinking that DA and DP are more different than I realized last week.

Readings WEDNESDAY July 24

ASSIGNMENT: The reflections should 1) demonstrate that you have critically read the assigned readings; 2) raise questions that you would like us to discuss in class; 3) provide any update on your final paper focus.

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Potter & Wetherell (1987), Discourse and Social Psychology, pp.1-93

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     This book is so much better than Edwards and Potter (July 15 and July 17)!!!!! The reading was faster and easier to follow... maybe Wetherell's influence?... and the authors chunked the material in a way that I comprehended more fluidly. The authors made an argument against using social psychology (SP), but it wasn't as abrasive, annoying, or repetitive (3 part list) as Edwards and Potter's argument (which frustrated me the most as I read.)

     The first chapter is foundational- describing where DA came from- Chomsky (really the argument against his simplified, out of context work), ethnomethodology (finally- a definition), and semiology (again- the definition!). Some of the articles we have read have mentioned both ethnomethodology and semiology as part of their theoretical frameworks- now I understand why. Ethnomethodology is the study of the methods people use. "people... are constantly attempting to understand what is going on in any situation and using these understandings to produce appropriate behavior of their own) (Potter & Wetherell, 1987, p. 18.) The big point about semiology is that what words mean (the signified) don't have much to do with the sound we use to refer to words (the signifier). For example, my fur-babies- Jackson and Oscar- are dogs. I use the sounds duh-aw-gh-ss when I talk about them, but those sounds have nothing to do with them being fur-babies. 

Oscar is the one with the awesome style!

     Chapter 2 looks deeper into DA, comparing some traditional SP strands to how DA approaches them. My favorite part of this was the variability piece. The authors wrote, when comparing SP and DA, "This kind of variation differs from the variation discourse analysts note as we are suggesting that what people say or their attitude will not be static either but just as variable as their behavior" (Potter & Wetherell, 1987, p. 53). Variation in accounts is something that most (extreme case) trained artists (member group) are familiar with. When you create a piece of art work, you have a specific idea behind the work- usually multilayered meanings and symbols. When you show your work, you release all meaning to the viewers. The same image can mean something new to everyone, it can also mean several things at once to the same viewer, and it can mean something different to the viewer after the passage of time. (3 part list, and I am recounting accounts of a personal experience and accounts of others to illustrate my point.)

     Chapters 3 and 4 both compared DA and SP. Specifically, chapter 3 looked at rules- "the meaning of rule is expressed in a way appropriate to the speaker's context" (Potter & Wetherell, 1987, p.72). Chapter 4 examined the sequencing of talk- "Conversational analysis emphasizes the vital nature of understanding each conversational turn in terms of the sequence in which it is embedded" (Potter & Wetherell, 1987, p.94).

     I had a lot of fun noticing the discursive resources I used today as I crafted my argument. 

Readings MONDAY July 22

ASSIGNMENT: The reflections should 1) demonstrate that you have critically read the assigned readings; 2) raise questions that you would like us to discuss in class; 3) provide any update on your final paper focus.

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• Lester, J.N. & Paulus, T.M. (2011). Accountability and public displays of knowing in an undergraduate computer-mediated communication context. Discourse Studies, 1-16.
  
  
• Gabriel, R. & Lester, J. (Forthcoming). The romance quest of education reform: A discourse analysis of The LA Times’ reports on value-added measurement teacher effectiveness. Teacher’s College Record.
  

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     Both of these articles provided examples of using DP in the field of education. What I found most helpful was seeing DP in a context with which I am familiar. Last week, I wrote that it seemed DP analysis was just gut reaction and that I was missing some psychology background knowledge in order to get the findings Potter and Edwards reported. Dr. Paulus replied that while the reporting language (in the previous cases) included psychology jargon, analyzing discourse is open to any speaker of discourse (which includes me!)

     I am very familiar with both CMC learning environments (like this blog) and teacher evaluations (particularly using TVAAS scores for teachers of non-tested grade levels and subject areas.) I also recognized in Gabriel and Lester's work the style of reporting research that is taught to us in the education department. For the first time in this course, I understood what DP may look like in my own research.

    The Lester and Paulus article was an example of an empirical study using DP as the epistemology and theoretical framework.  They used DA, CA, ethnomethodology, and rhetorical psychology as methods within DP. Their research question was "How do students work up their beliefs and experiences in this CMC environment?" (p. 5). The authors used 3 DA questions to guide the study...

1. "What are the students doing/accomplishing with their language?"
2. "How are they constructing their language in order to achieve this?"
3. "What resources are being used to perform these tasks?"

These questions are based on Edwards and Potter's work on function, construction, and resource of discourse (1992 p. 133 and 162). The concepts are applied within the analysis and seen clearly in the findings as the authors described the two patterns within the student blogs. Users of the "I don't know" pattern used the phrase to decrease accountability. Users of the "five paragraph" pattern used script formulations and extreme case forumaltions to deny alternate versions.

     Gabriel and Lester's article was a fast read- mostly because of the hot topic, but also the "Warranting Claims and Standards of Quality" section was particularly intriguing to me. This methodology felt like a blend of the qualitative courses that I have taken. It makes sense to me that analysis is not an ambiguous activity done behind the scenes and reported in a final work (dissertation). Instead, the authors wrote "Within a discourse analytic tradition, in lieu of simply telling the reader about the given argument/interpretation and then pointing to an excerpt that illustrates the researcher's point, the discourse analyst shows how she analyses a given excerpt and came to particular interpretations" (p. 16). The authors provided a "Map of Iterations" in the appendix which showed initial interests, then discursive features, and finally overarching patterns. I would love for our guest authors to speak to this process in a little more detail, because this may be how I would use DP in my own study.

    

References

Edwards, D. & Potter, J. (1992). Discursive psychology. Sage Publications.

Readings WEDNESDAY July 17

ASSIGNMENT: The reflections should 1) demonstrate that you have critically read the assigned readings; 2) raise questions that you would like us to discuss in class; 3) provide any update on your final paper focus.

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Edwards, D. & Potter, J. (1992). Discursive psychology. Sage Publications. p. 77-177.

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     Tonight's reading covered Chapters 4-7, the tail end of Edwards and Potter's book. Chapter 4 centered on factual reporting- how have psychologists previously attribute cause and responsibility. Chapter 5 compared chapter 4's information to how one might find attribution in discourse. Chapter 6 examined factual description and how people construct factual description and how they use it to undermine alternatives. Chapter 7 summed up the entire book and neatly packaged the work in the Discursive Action Model (DAM).

     I enjoyed that chapter 5 went back to Lawsongate. I particularly connected with this passage: "Put simply, when there is nothing to argue about there is no need to formulate the facts. Far from factual reporting being a contrast to rhetoric, it is a feature of rhetoric" (p. 125). The author's go on to point out that the journalists involved in Lawsongate only wrote vividly detailed description of the events (Factual accounts) when they had to defend themselves (argue) against Lawson's claims. In general this makes sense to me as a natural part of human discourse. I like to try to remember details from events so that as I am remembering them (in discourse with someone else) I can "prove" that it happened the way I am saying it. 

     A question (or concern?) came up in Chapter 6 after I read Edwards and Potter's analysis of the Thatcher interview. As I'm reading their analysis, it makes sense. Also, in class, we analyzed Paula Deen's interview- and that seemed to go smoothly. However, I feel like there is something missing. A lot of my own comments about Paula Deen were just gut instincts- "she probably means x" or "in my experience saying x meant y." So, do DP researchers actually start with a heavy background in psychology or conversation analysis? Is that what I'm missing? Or is it just going with your gut (after of course pouring over and transcribing the data)?

   My favorite part of the reading was the fake conversations between Edwards and Potter in Chapter 7. Box 9 was cute- it's a book about discourse, and they're talking to each other! Then, on page 164, the authors describe fact and interest (a section of DAM) as "the notion that reports are designed rhetorically," ....and... I realized that the entire book was written that way! Holy smokes! Even more of a shocker (and made me open my mind a little more to DP) Box 10 is another conversation discussing how their "descriptive discourse is put together to generate all sorts of effects," "The textual contrasts in the...book help set the analysis up as unproblematic and the voice of reason," and finally, that "all discourse [is} subject to the sorts of processes that we highlight" (p. 172, 173). I almost wish that I had read Chapter 7 first- not only for the great overview, but also for that ah-ha click that discourse is what we say and write and how we do those actions. (I actually do not think that Chapter 7 would be better first. I think a week of background knowledge and reading the first part of the book acclimated me to the vocabulary and context of Chapter 7.)

Readings MONDAY July 15

ASSIGNMENT: The reflections should 1) demonstrate that you have critically read the assigned readings; 2) raise questions that you would like us to discuss in class; 3) provide any update on your final paper focus.

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Edwards, D. & Potter, J. (1992). Discursive psychology. Sage Publications. p. 1-76.

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     Today's readings consisted of the introduction and chapters 1-3 of Edwards and Potter's book referenced above. The introduction and chapter 1 offer an explanation of discursive psychology (DP) and how the author's will use the model throughout the rest of the book. Chapters 2 and 3 are examples of using discourse to learn about memory. 

 

     Highlights from the intro and chapter 1 include the following:

• When people report, or describe, "factual" events, they are "performing delicate and psychologically problematic actions" (p. 3) and that others receive reports as such. DP is charged with figuring out how people tend to these actions. Although, I get frustrated with some of the reading (see last Wednesday's blog), I actually relate to this kind of work. I know that DP research isn't concerned with the applicability of DP, but I see the use of understanding how people construct meaning in social situations by what they say and how they say it. I see this being used in my everyday life working with teachers. 
• DP, using the discursive action model, takes Chomsky's mess (language is "simply too messy and disorderly to be addressed" p. 5) and scrutinizes each detail as "crucially important for the sense of the activities being performed in the talk" (p. 6). In class last week, a lot of us felt overwhelmed at the thought of analyzing every little thing that people say within a conversation. However, the authors actually just take the pieces of the conversation that they would like to investigate and use the rest of the conversation for background knowledge.
• The authors remark that "there is no single, definitive version of everyday events" (p. 9). There was a lot of conversation in the case study class I just took about how researchers see the world and how that perspective (and belief system) influences what they research and how. In that class, we focused on positivism, post-positivism, and constructivism. (We also briefly discussed postmodernism.) Would DP be an entirely new category for epistemology? Are there hybrids of DP and constructivist, or is DP too specific to allow that?
• Speaking of epistemology, I am probably more of a "proponent of cognitivism"(p. 18) due to its interest in the individual, but I'll try to bracket (p. 19) that for the semester and dive in to DP.

     I enjoyed reading Chapters 2 and 3, because they were less about what DP is and the argument for using DP instead of traditional methodologies, and more about using DP in contexts. In chapter 2, the authors reviewed Neisser's study of John Dean's testimony during the Watergate scandal. The author's liked that Neisser used large pieces of text in his study making his interpretation of the events more explicit. What the authors did not like was Neisser's idea that accurate recall is possible. The author's do not think that there is one truth, so people studying memory should not be concerned about how accurate the person is, mostly because there is usually no way to tell anyway! The author's go on to cite Schegloff (1972), "A verbal remembering of events is a description. Descriptions can vary in a range of significant ways without their being merely...true or false" (p. 51).

 

     Chapter 3 reviews an argument between 10 newspaper journalists and a politician. The journalists claimed that the politician said x. The politician at first denied saying x. The quote was off the record and no one had a recording or full transcription of the events. Then, the politician said, actually you quoted me correctly, but interpreted what I said incorrectly. Finally, the journalists said well, we interpreted you this way because of the other stuff you said. "And thus the interpretations became indistinguishable from the facts of that was actually said" (p. 67). What the entire "conversation" boils down to is this... From each perspective, the participant believes themselves as the realist, truth-teller and the other person, who is obviously wrong, must be just constructing their own reality. (This goes back to last Wednesday's reading- Gilbert and Mulkey- when scientists justified their right or wrong hypothesis.)

Readings WEDNESDAY 7.10.13

ASSIGNMENT: The reflections should 1) demonstrate that you have critically read the assigned readings; 2) raise questions that you would like us to discuss in class; 3) provide any update on your final paper focus.

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• Roche, B. & Barnes-Holmes, D. (2003). Behavior analysis and social constructionism: Some points of contact and departure. The Behavior Analyst 26, 215-231. 
  
  
• Gilbert, G.N. & Mulkay, M. (1982). Warranting scientific belief. Social Studies of Science 12, 383-408. 
  
  
• Lester, J. (2011). Exploring the borders of cognitive and discursive psychology: A methodological reconceptualization of cognition and discourse. Journal of Cognitive Education and Psychology 10(3), 280-293. 
  
  
• Edwards, D. (2006). Discourse, cognition and social practices: the rich surface of language and interaction. Discourse Studies 8(1), 41-49.

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      I found the readings and discussions from Monday boosted my background knowledge on DP. The dictionary only came out a few times today!

     Edwards (2006) article was an example of using DP and cognitive psychology. Edwards went into detail about how a psychological state (like intention) can be realized through the actions of talk and text. Although there were a few psychological terms I was unfamiliar with, as I read the article I realized that I am more familiar with DP, DA, and CA and really focused on some of the nuances of the DP descriptions. My favorite phrases include "active management" p. 41 and "common sense topics" p. 42.

     I had a hard time with the Roche & Barnes-Holmes article (2003), which made me feel completely lacking in background knowledge once again. The authors basically explained the similarities and differences between behaviorism and social constructivism (known to us as DA). The interesting section for me was "Language as a key feature of human action" (p. 221). Although behaviorism traditionally used non-human subjects and generalized their findings to human populations, current research (backed by Skinner, no less) examines language in relationship to a variety of human functions by actually studying humans. Both fields also believe that language comes from social interactions.

    Gilbert and Mulkay's (1982) article was about how scientists come to their beliefs and the rationale behind those choices. This article uses interview transcriptions, but does not use Jeffersonian transcription. (Question: to be called DP or DA, do researchers have to use Jeffersonian transcription?) Scientists, when justifying their own research opinions, will use logical, well-defined descriptions based on "impersonal, standardized routines" (p. 400). When scientists justify changes to their previous opinions (usually due to someone else prevailing theory), non-cognitive factors are to blame for the original misinterpretation. The authors compare this derisiveness to what the division in social science research.

 

My Big Ah-ha!

 

     Lester's (2011) article led me to reflect on the last readings, specifically Edwards and Potter's fight for the validity of DP in the field of psychology. There seemed to be a similar dichotomy in the field of cognitive psychology. All three authors give me the impression that they see major assumptions of their field on one side of the spectrum and DP on the other side. For example, in both sets of reading, the authors discuss the work of their field primarily focused on the individual- cognition is individualistic instead of socially constructed. 

 

     While I was reading Lester's work, I had an entire conversation in the margins of the page (I'm not kidding- check out the picture below). I couldn't understand why the middle ground seemed absent in these readings. To me, it seems like without individual cognition there would be no social interaction (in my mind, I was picturing a room full of vegetative patients), but also without social interaction there is limited individual cognition (for example- feral children often have limited cognitive ability because they have no interaction with people- they can't just start talking or understanding contexts once they are around people- they have actually lost that ability).

 

 

 

     The individual vs. social construction of cognition makes me think about the old nature vs. nurture argument, and I've long thought- why not both? Then... I hit upon Lester's description of Vygotsky's work.... and thank goodness! Vygotsky believed in both! I realized that the either/or arguments were bothering me so much because they went against the work of my own field. In art education, we learn about and apply Vygotsky's scaffolding techniques to held individual students learn in social situations. So, to sum up... I understand my resistance to choosing the individual over the social constructions, and I'm glad that a researcher I know and respect showed up in my readings today to help me understand cognitive psychology and DP! As it says in the margin, "Good job, Vygotsky!"      

     

 

Readings MONDAY 7.8.13

ASSIGNMENT: The reflections should 1) demonstrate that you have critically read the assigned readings; 2) raise questions that you would like us to discuss in class; 3) provide any update on your final paper focus.

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Potter, J. (2012). Discourse analysis and discursive psychology. In Cooper, H. (Editor-in-Chief). APA handbook of research methods in psychology: Vol. 2. Quantitative, qualitative, neuropsychological, and biological (pp. 111-130). Washington: American Psychological Association Press. Potter (2012b).

Edwards, D. (2012). Discursive and scientific psychology. British Journal of Social Psychology 51, 425-435. 

Wiggins, S., Potter, J. & Wildsmith, A. (2001). Eating your words: Discursive psychology and the reconstruction of eating practices. Journal of Health Psychology 6(5), 5- 15.  

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     Today's readings were an introduction to discursive psychology. The authors provided the background of discursive psychology (DP) and examples that illustrated the use of the DP approach to the study of several topics (e.g. crying and eating).

     Potter (2012) writes in detail about DP including how the research came from previous work, the characteristics of discourse, and the seven stages of completing DP research in which he uses one of his own studies as an example. First, he describes how DP, as we know it today, was formed from three strands of interrelated research: interviews and repertoires (Potter & Weatherall- interested in analyzing "interpretive repertoires" from open-ended interviews, Gilbert & Mulkey- examined the repertoires of scientists as they communicated with each other, and Billing- worked with ideological dilemmas using rhetorical psychology, which built on Potter & Weatherall's work), discursive psychology and constructionism (Edward, Potter, & Hepburn- focused on naturalistic interaction and first used DP as the explicit description of their work), and discursive psychology and sequential analysis (combination of the first two strands, uses Jeffersonian transcription, examines categories and how they are sequenced within conversations).

     Potter (2012) then defines the four characteristics of discourse as action-oriented, situated, both constructed and constructive, produced as psychological. Actions are the words that are used and how they are used in the context. These actions are situated in the present, are relevant to the identities of the participants, and make use of rhetoric. Discourse is not only the way that sentences are put together or how words are said, but also how talk and text are used to convey broader meanings. Discourse is psychological in that it can be objective or subjective in its context.

     Lastly, Potter (2012) walks through seven stages of DP research. I found this piece of the article to be the most intriguing, because I was able to compare the procedure outlined by Potter to the procedure I recently learned in a Case Study Research class. Before this point in the reading, I was feeling a little lost in the world of psychology- like I didn't quite have all the background knowledge I needed to read fully understand some of the principles (I had to pull out the dictionary quite a bit!) The following is a table that compares DP with Case Study. 

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Discursive Psychology	Case Study
1. Obtain access and consent ·      uses key institutional member ·      gets consent from participants	·      Use of a gatekeeper ·      consent forms, IRB, etc.
2. Data collection ·      records real life situations ·      participants are collectors	·      Uses multiples sources of evidence- interviews, observations, documents ·      Researchers are the instrument
3. Data management ·      organizes data for ease of access and searching ·      easy to share with others	·      Use of database to house extensive data from interviews and observations ·      Can be shared with others
4. Transcription ·      first pass by transcription services ·      in-depth Jeffersonian transcription of key parts of recordings ·      continually reference transcriptions and recordings	·      First interview is transcribed by researcher and service, all others transcribed by service ·      Do not typically use recordings after transcription
5. Develop research questions ·      Happens continuously throughout process ·      Typically gather data before creating RQs	·      RQs can by modified, but general idea before collection
6. Analysis ·      Use literature to guide analysis ·      Start from broad and go to specific	·      Can use a variety of methods for analysis ·      Usually have a theoretical or conceptual framework for beginning analysis ·      Use coding: Start from broad and go to specific ·      Use literature to guide analysis
7. Validation ·      Participants orientations ·      Deviant cases ·      Coherence (with previous literature) ·      Readers’ evaluation	·      External and internal validity concerns ·      Triangulation of methods ·      Collect multiple types of evidence ·      Rich, thick description ·      Reader generalizability

     Edwards (2012) wrote about the difference between DP and experimental psychology. He begins with an overview of the research origin and what exactly DP is (This is mostly a repeat of the Potter article). Of particular note to me was the common sense approach to DP research as Edwards discusses in the interpretive gap section. Using real-world situations and looking at what was said and how it was said by the participants seems like what is missing in some qualitative work. Specifically, in case study, researchers provide rich, thick description of the participants and their contexts rather than letting the participants speak for themselves. The researcher is also the instrument in case study research, and data collection and analysis must be validated in several ways because of the bias of the researcher and his/her direct influence on the data. Because DP lets the participants record conversations and the researchers use the actual recordings, the interpretive gap is more narrow. (The article compares DP to experimental designs which have a larger interpretive gap.)

      I enjoyed the Wiggins, Potter, & Wildsmith (2001) article because the authors applied the DP approach to the subject of family eating practices. It was helpful to read a research article that first went through the research on eating, then described the methodology, and finally analyzed the transcriptions. Although, I am unfamiliar with a lot of the psychological terms that the authors used, I understood the process of DP and could follow the steps due to the clear and concise writing.

     I enjoy the common sense approach of DP to data collection and am interested in how this process could be used outside of the field of psychology. Here are a few questions that came up as I read.

• How would a theoretical framework be used in DP? Is it appropriate?
• Are there examples of using DP along with other data collection methods, like also using interviews or observations?
• What is the difference between discursive psychology and conversation analysis?