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.