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Within the framework of scientific argumentation, this study explores the role of what we here call the unstated argument in knowledge construction. The case study conducted in a cancer research lab in Brussels, uses observation, open interviews, and discourse analysis. Guided by Discursive Psychology as a theory and method, it examines the bases of a specific unstated argument embedded in tacit knowledge. The unstated argument is about medium usage in cancer research. The medium is a chemical liquid composed of a number of substances injected into the cells that scientists use to carry out experiments. The findings suggest that the unstated argument comprises a claim and de facto evidence. The claim is that the medium usage is appropriate and not problematic for research results. The evidence: (1) does not emanate from research; (2) is based on personal opinion; and (3) is backed up by the following factors: (a) practicing the status quo; (b) adhering to cancer-research standards; and (c) being bound by the demand and supply interplay. Provoked by the present study, counterevidence is ultimately substantiated by the same scientists. The counterevidence happens to challenge the claim, as it is based on expert-opinion. The study suggests that ethnography can offer a unique methodological stance to discern the unstated arguments embedded in tacit knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to show how the scientific realism proposed by the philosopher Evandro Agazzi contributes to the epistemological development of social discursive psychology. To do this, the debates led by Ian Parker and John Greenwood in the early 1990s about scientific and critical realism are addressed. In this debate, the limits of naive empiricism and discursive idealism, which began to predominate in discursive social psychology, are highlighted. Evandro Agazzi's assumptions about scientific realism are then presented to account for the contributions of scientific realism to the epistemological development of discursive social psychology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I examine deficit talk, utterances that depict students and/or families based on their perceived deficits, in an equity-oriented professional development (PD) setting. Researchers often attribute deficit talk by mathematics teachers (MTs) to their biased beliefs and perceptions. From an interactional approach, namely conversation analysis and discursive psychology, I offer an alternative perspective on how deficit talk is produced in PD interactions. The analysis shows the rhetorical functions of deficit talk, which are designed for MTs to manage their accountability with a range of potential issues and to portray themselves as competent teachers. The analysis also reveals the action-performing nature of deficit talk (e.g., refusing a request) situated in the social interaction. To conclude, this paper suggests that mathematics teacher educators need to attend to the micropolitical nature of deficit talk and their co-participation in the production of deficit talk as they formulate ways to respond to deficit talk in PD interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Psychological Research (formerly Psychologische Forschung) has been published for a century which makes it a valuable subject matter for historical investigations. The journal's development bears traces of the progress in psychology. This development is of particular interest for the field of theoretical psychology which investigates the epistemological and methodological background. Our hypothesis is that the history of Psychological Research is indicative for the transformations within the discourse of the discipline, i.e., the general context of communication in psychology. We revisit the changes in the editorial practises of the journal through a scientometric mixed-methods approach, combining bibliometric analyses which compare Psychological Research to Psychological Review and the British Journal of Psychology with a single-case investigation. Regarding form, we find continuities and disruptions in the development of the editorial customs from long and single-author to short and multi-author contributions. Investigating content through word frequency analysis shows that the journal's history reflects the rise of the cognitivist paradigm as well as a transition from theoretical discourse towards experimentation. The analysis of a single case demonstrates the nature of past theoretical discourse in contrast to contemporary practises. Overall, our findings support the assumption of discursive transformations. From the perspective of theoretical psychology, these transformations can be described as a shift towards Methodism which entails a critical negligence of theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This means that the profile of the journal has changed over time, presumably as a consequence of some mixture of explicit or implicit preferences of editors and ideas of authors and readers what the journal stands for. He characterizes the journal as "a survivor of both political and scientific darkness" and praises its strong reliance on a solid empirical basis, even though he also highlights the downsides of becoming a journal that is attractive to increasingly many authors. Heuer structures the different phases of the journal into the journal's I Awakening i in the 1920s, its I Destruction i in the 1930s, its I Comeback i after the war, I Consolidation i in the 1990s, and its eventual I Rise i in the new millennium. To look back and celebrate the journal's anniversary, I have invited four articles that address two different aspects of the journal's history: the development of the journal, its content, readership, and impact over time and the theoretical and sociocultural climate reflected in the journal in its founding period. [Extracted from the article]

Numerous challenges associated with the work of teaching have been reported around the globe, including from Singapore. Being a multi-dimensional problem, teachers' work has been investigated by diverse research methods especially through interviewing. However, educational studies that adopt constructionist approaches have been scarce in Singapore, and none have used it to investigate teachers' work here. This study based on Discursive Psychology, thus, analyzes interview data from school teachers in Singapore talking about their work. Specifically, interviewing is taken as a "topic," which prioritizes how talk is co-constructed, rhetorically motivated, and likely with contradictions over the disclosure of information (i.e., taking interviewing as "resource"); various discursive strategies perform diverse rhetorical functions for speakers. There are two interrelated contributions from this study: (i) an increased appreciation of a constructionist approach like Discursive Psychology during interviewing, and (ii) the opening of different perspectives and generative research questions about teachers' work in Singapore. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Currently cellphone fraudsters often use language to threaten and bully victims. From discursive psychological perspective, the present study applies conversation analysis to discuss fraudsters' threatening language in Chinese cellphone fraud conversations. The authentic data are collected from Chinese media which report legal news or conduct public legal education on the battle against cellphone frauds. Results of the study show that: (1) cellphone fraudsters construct their false identities through information gap and information sharing in their turn-taking designs, which brings victims into the threatening fraud interactions; (2) fraudsters use such conversational skills in a threatening tone as repetition, interruption, higher pitch, louder speech and so on to trigger victims' psychological panic; (3) fraudsters' discursive practices are situated for the threatening actions based on prepared and designed scripts. The findings of the study are expected to provide references for preventing cellphone fraud and fighting against fraudsters' threats and bullies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on third party reactions to (transgressive) sexual encounters has frequently bypassed the question of how observers categorize such encounters as normal sexual experience, sexual violence, or potentially as something else. In the present study, we investigated the ways in which participants made sense of a nonconsensual sexual encounter between a man (i.e., the initiating party) and either a male or a female student (i.e., the targeted party). We specifically focused on how participants utilized sexual scripts and gender stereotypes to describe what happened and as a means of attributing responsibility to the actors. Using the Articulated Thoughts in Simulated Situations (ATSS) technique, 52 Dutch participants (26 men and 26 women) responded aloud to a vignette. Data were analyzed using discourse analysis as employed in discursive psychology. The findings demonstrated that participants constructed the event described in the vignette as normal while depicting the targeted party as abnormal and accountable. Participants strategically employed sexual scripts and gender stereotypes to describe the event as predictable and not serious and the initiating party's actions as in little need of explanation. The targeted party was positioned as detached from this "objective reality" and was held accountable for neither following nor sufficiently breaking with the script. In consequence, the event was rendered nonthreatening. Our results illustrated the ways in which predominant discourses influence interpretations of encounters as transgressive or "just" sex, having important implications for those who seek to share their experiences of sexual violation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Psychiatry is the science that aims to propose plausible theories in the description and explanation of "body-mind" pathologies. Since also the modern institution of science produces a type of discourse aimed at reducing human insecuritas through a progressive falsification of conjectures on how things are actually, it seems very important to monitor the discursive construction of un-certainty about an extremely elusive object such as the abnormality of psychic functioning. In the light of this, the present paper aims to identify what changes are traceable in the argumentative structure of un-certainty in the psychiatric scientific communication by the British Journal of Psychiatry in its life span as well as how the construction of socially "credible" authorship profiles evolves. The randomly-selected 90 articles from the 160 years of the BJP life cycle were analyzed through various interpretative apparatuses, by practicing both bottom-up and top-down approaches. Indeed, in the perspective of cultural and discursive psychology, un-certainty is a multidimensional discursive construction which is not attributable to the psycho-linguistic level of the utterance in its entirety, but to the meta-pragmatic dimension of enunciation. The identified rhetoric, which collects the groupings of enunciative profiles, sees the researcher evolving between the explorer's attempts, the investigator's inquiries and the critical rigor of the technician. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Previous studies of in-service teachers indicate strong links between teacher self-efficacy and factors such as instructional quality and pupils' achievement. Yet, much of this research approaches self-efficacy from the perspective of teaching, and not of subject knowledge. Furthermore, the majority of such studies employ quantitative measures of self-efficacy. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 22 experienced elementary teachers, this paper takes a different approach. The interviews, broadly focused on teachers' mathematics-related beliefs, brought to the surface four themes around which teachers construct their mathematics teacher self-efficacy. These concern participants' perspectives on their mathematics-related past experiences, mathematical competence, ability to realise their didactical visions and resilience in the face of challenging mathematical situations. These themes, which are discussed in relation to existing literature, not only confirm the complexity of self-efficacy but also highlight the need for greater attention to its conceptualisation and measurement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Girls' underrepresentation in high-level post-compulsory mathematics is a longstanding issue of concern in many Western nations, with innumerable efforts to increase their participation producing little impact. In this paper, we shed new light on girls' underrepresentation through a post-structural feminist investigation of mathematics teachers' discursive constructions of high-level senior secondary mathematics students. Our analysis of semi-structured interviews with 22 Australian mathematics teachers revealed gendered views that serve to exclude many students from the high-level mathematics student category. Most concerning was their recurring naturalised construction of successful high-level mathematics students as endowed with the right, invariably male, brain. In so doing, teachers repeatedly closed off the possibility of success to those lacking such a 'mathematics gift', effectively 'counting girls out'. We argue that increasing girls' participation in mathematics requires moving beyond current efforts to raise female interest and confidence to, more profoundly, disrupt enduring discourses of male superiority in mathematics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) are frequently used in research to reflect the patient's perspective. In this commentary, I argue that further improvements can be made in how we develop and evaluate PROMs by viewing assessment as a type of conversation. Philosophically speaking, a PROM assessment can be conceptualized as a formal conversation that serves as a model of an informal, longer, and more nuanced conversation with a research participant about their health experience. Psychologically speaking, evidence from research in survey methodology and discursive psychology shows that respondents to self-report measures behave in ways consistent with the idea that they are doing their best to participate in a conversation, albeit an unusual one. Several suggestions are offered for creating a better conversational context through study materials and PROM instructions, and by improving the yield of cognitive interviews. It is hoped that this commentary can stimulate further discussions in our field regarding how to integrate insights about the conversational nature of assessment from survey research and discursive psychology to better reflect the patient's voice in research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In "Intentional action and side-effects in ordinary language" (2003), Joshua Knobe reported an asymmetry in test subjects' responses to a question about intentionality: subjects are more likely to judge that a side effect of an agent's intended action is intentional if they think the side effect is morally bad than if they think it is morally good. This result has been taken to suggest that the concept of intentionality is an inherently moral concept. In this paper, we draw attention to the fact that Knobe's original interpretation of the results is based on an abstract rendering of the central scenario (the Chairman scenario) that is significantly different from the vignettes presented to the survey participants. In particular, the experimental vignettes involve temporal and social dimensions; they portray sequences of social actions involving an agent and an interlocutor, rather than a lone agent making a momentary decision in light of certain attitudes. Through textual analyses of a set of vignettes used to study the Knobe effect, drawing on ethnomethodology, conversation analysis, and discursive psychology, we show that there are many differences between the experimental conditions besides the moral valence of the side effect. In light of our textual analyses, we discuss vignette methodology in experimental philosophy and suggest an alternative interpretation of Knobe's original experimental results. We also argue that experimental philosophy could benefit from considering research on naturally occurring social interaction as an alternative source of empirical findings for discussions of folk-psychological concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a report of a case study on the professional agency of an experienced early years teacher, Sarah, who successfully embedded a chemical science program of teaching-learning for her students aged between 6 and 8. Interactive ethnography informs the research design, and discursive psychology provides the tools for the analysis of Sarah's speech acts for her positioning as a responsible agent. Reframing the problem of primary teacher reluctance to teach science in terms of primary teachers' professional agency using discursive psychology, this ontological study provides new insight into issues related to the provision of science education in primary schools and asks: How do primary teachers position themselves and others in relation to science curriculum and education? The research calls for research methodologies and reform efforts in primary science that are better grounded in the local moral orders of primary schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conceptions of acceptability-based moral or political justification take it that authoritative acceptability constitutes validity, or justification. There is no agreement as to what authoritativeness threshold such justification must employ. The paper engages the issue in relation to (i) the level of idealization that an authoritativeness threshold, ψ, imparts to a standard of acceptability-based justification, S, and (ii) the discursive purchase of the discursive standing that S can accord to people when it builds on ψ. To this end, I argue that (i) and (ii) are interdependent: high idealization values entail low purchase, while high purchase requires low idealization values. I then distinguish between alethic and recognitive views of acceptability-based justification: the former prioritize alethic ends that require high idealization values, while the latter pursue recognitive ends that favor high discursive purchase. Against this background, I argue for a recognitivist constraint on idealization. To render the recognitive discursive minimum available to relevant people at the site of justification, S should set ψ such that it is a genuine option for actual relevant people to reject relevant views in ways that S recognizes as authoritative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This exploratory and formative study draws from discursive psychology to gain insights into how young people construct their experiences of parental domestic violence and abuse (DVA) and how they claim to understand the occurrence of DVA within their home. Data from interviews with 13 young people (18–26 years old) who reported DVA in their families of origin were analyzed using a discursive psychological approach. Analysis revealed two interrelated themes. Theme 1, '"How it was": constructions of DVA' identified that the young people had difficulty in recognizing psychological aspects of this phenomenon as DVA. However, as these behaviors also deviated from the normative expectations of intra-parental behaviors, the occurrence of psychological DVA led to ambiguity and confusion. Paradoxically, the occurrence of extreme physical DVA was readily recognized as DVA, and this worked to facilitate disclosure, discussion, and help-seeking. Theme 2, 'Barriers and facilitators to talking with mothers about DVA', identified how young people's reported perceptions of their mother's role in DVA were related to the likelihood that they had conversations about DVA with their mothers. The occurrence of extreme physical DVA, which unambiguously placed responsibility for the DVA with the perpetrator, who in the cases presented here were male, was reported to enable conversations around DVA between the young people and their mothers. Findings suggest a need to adapt discourses to make understandings of the psychological aspect of DVA more accessible to young people, so they can name and make sense of their experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethnomethodological approaches to research such as Interactionism, Conversation Analysis and Discursive Psychology have so far played only a small part in mathematics education research. This is in contrast to the wider use of these approaches in language education, medical discourse research, and legal discourse research. This article outlines the key principles an ethnomethodological approach follows, the methods used and the necessary reconceptualisation of some key concepts that are the focus of much mathematics education research. These are illustrated with some key examples from research in mathematics education, before looking at other fields for potential opportunities not yet realised within research in mathematics classrooms. These opportunities include a range of research questions already receiving a great deal of attention within the field but are yet to be examined from an ethnomethodological perspective. They also include new approaches that involve combining different research approaches which have been used to great effect in other fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Heterosexual casual sex is routinely depicted as a physically, socially, and psychologically "risky" practice. This is the case in media accounts, psychological research, and other academic work. In this article, we examine 15 men's and 15 women's talk about casual sex from a discursive psychological stance to achieve two objectives. Firstly, we confirm the categories of risk typically associated with casual sex but expand these to include a domain of risks related to (gendered) identities and representation. Men's talk of risk centered on concerns about sexual performance, whereas women's talk centered on keeping safe from violence and sexual coercion. The notion of a sexual reputation was also identified as a risk and again manifested differently for men and women. While women were concerned about being deemed promiscuous, men displayed concern about the quality of their sexual performance. Secondly, within this talk about risks of casual sex, the participants' identities were identified as "at risk" and requiring careful management within the interview context. This was demonstrated by instances of: keeping masculinity intact in accounts of no erection, negotiating a responsible subject position, and crafting agency in accounts of sexual coercion-in the participants' talk. We argue that casual sex, as situated within dominant discourses of gendered heterosexuality, is a fraught practice for both men and women and subject to the demands of identity representation within co-present interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following commentary critically reflects on the pragmatic and semiotic approach to language and identity articulated by Tapia, Rojas, and Picado ( Culture & Psychology, Tapia et al. 2017). The following questions are central: 1) What theoretical position is (tacitly) being articulated regarding the nature of language and discourse? Although the authors admit that an explicit theorization of language and discourse is not their focus, the absence of a clear theoretical position is conspicuously problematic. And 2) is there an unintended cognitivism present in the way the authors formulate the relationship between language/discourse and identity? After discussing these questions, select parts of a radical interactional approach, grounded in discursive positioning, will be presented as an amendment to the present work, insofar as it attempts to both articulate a progressive theorization of language and discourse and avoid an unintended slide into cognitivism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I argue that the account of emergence advanced by Broad (The mind and its place in nature, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, () is both defensible (in the sense that it provides a coherent and non-mysterious view that does what we want a theory of emergence to do) and applicable to some examples of group-level (or social) phenomena. Specifically, Broad's account enables the formulation of a non-reductive physicalism (in philosophy of mind) or of a non-reductive individualism (in philosophy of social science), and correctly describes the case of group-judgment under the conditions of the discursive dilemma. Furthermore, this analysis shows that emergent phenomena need not be characterised using the resources of complexity theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to show some of the limitations of the Theory of Mind approach to interaction compared to a conversation analytic alternative. In the former, mental state terms are examined as words that signify internal referents. This study examines children's uses of 'I want' in situ. The data are taken from a corpus of family mealtimes. 'I want' constructions are shown to be interactionally occasioned. The analysis suggests that (a) a referential view of language does not adequately account for how mental state terms are used in talk, (b) the dominant methodology for examining children's understanding of 'desires' is based on several problematic assumptions. It is concluded that participation in interaction is a social matter, a consideration that is obscured by Theory of Mind and its favoured methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout the course of everyday life individuals enter into interactions in which an intricate relationship between agency and subordination can be observed: they sometimes act agentively and at other times-via discursive and/or interpersonal processes-their agency is reduced to objectness. Thus, theoretically we can think of constant dynamics of transfer of agency. It is argued that the transfer of agency between persons (or groups) is a fundamental quality of the societal discourses in which all persons are constituted. This transfer of agency occurs constantly throughout social interaction and at different levels of social functioning as individuals live and make meaning of their experiences. In light of this perspective, it is suggested that social change movements that aim to interrupt the transfer of agency and instead fix agency with one person (or one group of people) are inadequate. Rather, these movements can actually subvert their own agenda by producing problematic tensions in discourse and subjectivity. The self-defense movement, a component of the movement to end violence against women, is presented as a case study. The problematic and tension-filled positions and meanings the movement (re)produces for women are explored as an effect of denying any transfer of agency between women and men around issues of violence and gender oppression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aggregation of consistent individual judgments on logically interconnected propositions into a collective judgment on those propositions has recently drawn much attention. Seemingly reasonable aggregation procedures, such as propositionwise majority voting, cannot ensure an equally consistent collective conclusion. In this paper, we motivate that quite often, we do not only want to make a factually right decision, but also to correctly evaluate the reasons for that decision. In other words, we address the problem of tracking the truth. We set up a probabilistic model that generalizes the analysis of Bovens and Rabinowicz (Synthese 150: 131-153, ) and use it to compare several aggregation procedures. Demanding some reasonable adequacy constraints, we demonstrate that a reasons- or premise-based aggregation procedure tracks the truth better than any other procedure. However, we also illuminate that such a procedure is not in all circumstances easy to implement, leaving actual decision-makers with a tradeoff problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of talk about changing their lives, incarcerated young men and their supervisors talk about faith as a force for positive change. Given the historical and contemporary significance of religion as a locus of organizing and collective struggle, I argue that faith represents a potential asset in efforts to assist incarcerated young offenders pursue education, legal work, and sobriety or diminished substance (ab-)use. I draw on growing consensus among scholars of youth development that religious affiliation, and spirituality more generally, are protective and can promote other positive developmental outcomes. I also draw on discursive studies of substance abuse treatment and religious conversion to highlight the ways in which faith talk by and for youth offers avenues for institutionally sanctioned agency and recognized genres of biographical reconstruction. I conclude by suggesting that critically exploring matters of faith and belief in public institutions might usefully inform curricular and programmatic interventions to assist young people avoid recidivism, school failure and substance abuse, and perhaps, find or imagine satisfying and meaningful adult lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

n impossibility result pertaining to the aggregation of individual judgements is thought by many to have significant implications for political theory, social epistemology and metaphysics. When members of a group hold a rational set of judgments on some interconnected questions, the theorem shows, it isn't always (logically) possible for them to aggregate their judgements into a collective one in conformity with seemingly very plausible constraints. I reject one of the constraints which engender the dilemma. The analogy with the lottery paradox, I argue, shows that rational belief needn't be consistent. So the alleged implications of the dilemma are dispelled. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research in mathematics education is a discursive process: It entails the analysis and production of texts, whether in the analysis of what learners say, the use of transcripts, or the publication of research reports. Much research in mathematics education is concerned with various aspects of mathematical thinking, including mathematical knowing, understanding and learning. In this paper, using ideas from discursive psychology, I examine the discursive construction of mathematical thinking in the research process. I focus, in particular, on the role of researchers’ descriptions. Specifically, I examine discursive features of two well-known research papers on mathematical thinking. These features include the use of contrast structures, categorisation and the construction of facts. Based on this analysis, I argue that researchers’ descriptions of learners’ or researchers’ behaviour and interaction make possible subsequent accounts of mathematical thinking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Medically oriented psychotherapists typically record progress notes by articulating client symptoms, diagnoses, functional status, progress, and adherence to treatment plans. This orientation can challenge marriage and family therapists working from discursive or post-modern perspectives. Although there are discursive therapy friendly treatment planning guides, no published research on such practice exists. To address this gap the researchers conducted a recursive frame qualitative analysis of 206 de-identified progress notes from 30 completed cases seen by MFT master’s students learning discursive approaches to therapy in a university-based training clinic. Researchers found students noted problem to solution-focused discourse tipping or turning points in 20 cases with positive outcomes and no comparable shifts in 10 cases with negative or unclear outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I discuss the problem of using the emotional/cognitive duality as a satisfactory way of formulating the problem of linguistic origins and of the distinctiveness of literary language. I address in particular Shanahan’s use of the work of Ernst Cassirer and Susanne Langer. I point out that Cassirer offers us a multileveled model of language’s sense-functions which avoids false oppositions and that Langer shows that literature does not belong to the discursive but to the presentational order of symbolism. Such insights strengthen rather than weaken Shanahan’s main points about the ‘localization’ and nature of meaning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The “discursive turn” in therapy gave the therapeutic relationship its deserved significance, which was implied but never fully recognized in traditional therapy literature. The exception would be the writing of Rogers, Satir, and Whitaker. Therapists’ actions in relation to clients became the topic of critical analysis and reflection rather than a resource for addressing some underlying inter- or intra-psychic forces and processes. This paper focuses on the issue of the therapist’s relational engagement with families, particularly the notion of therapist power, as conceived within three discursive approaches to family therapy: narrative, solution-focused, and collaborative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years there have been a number of attempts by different researchers to study men and masculinity using a combination of discourse theory and psychoanalysis. The main reason for this development is the sense that, on its own, discourse theory provides an incomplete account of masculine subjectivity. Psychoanalysis is thought to be able to fill those gaps. In this paper I reviewed these arguments, provided an outline of the alleged deficiencies in discursive approaches to men and masculinity, and examined some of the work that has attempted the above synthesis. I argued that, for a number of reasons, such attempts are bound to fail. Instead, I argued that better progress can be made in studies of masculinity by remaining within the theoretical boundaries of Discursive Psychology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The formation of same-gender couple and parental relationships is described and analyzed from a combined relational and couple therapy. The parenthood transition of a homosexual couple into a family structure, that includes two biological parents and a stepfather, creates tremendous turbulence and crises. The couple link is transformed throughout critical and major changes from a “two-ness” unit into a “four- one”, which develops unique relationships with the mother and the baby. This paper presents how therapists can treat and intervene in both intra-psychic gender crises as well as inter-psychic breakdowns of the couple shared reality. The therapeutic processes highlight the transformative changes that the homosexual couple has to experience in order to accept the loss of previous accomplishments in gender identity and love relationships. In addition, therapy helps to disentangle co-joint couple objects while creating new shared spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the potency of a discursive approach for better understanding the complexity of men’s masculinity within a therapeutic context. Two familiar accounts of masculinity are outlined and the limitations of these approaches for family therapy considered. The authors suggest that a social constructionist, discursive approach can lead to more productive therapeutic work with men. Toward this end, the concepts of discourse and positioning are presented. These discursive concepts make the cultural production of masculinity more visible, which provides men in family therapy more freedom to explore problems with less totalizing descriptions. In addition, it is proposed that a discursive analysis which acknowledges and honors the cultural context of masculinity invites men to resist those discourses that constrict and constrain them. Implications for practice are included. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the author presents his views on the criticism of his article related to discursive psychology by Jonathan Potter and Derek Edwards, which was published in an earlier issue of the journal "Human Studies," as of July 2004. The author challenged the claim that there is a genuinely coherent and distinctive project for "discursive psychology." Not knowing quite how to understand what Potter, Edwards and others mean by the notion of "psychology" in their various writings, it is very difficult to ascertain what set of analytical problems and purposes they are putting in the place of post-Cartesian ones. Potter and Edwards fail consistently to distinguish between three separable issues. The first is the requirement to subject Cartesian and cognitivist theorizing to technical critique when it is advanced by professionals in the human sciences. The second is the extension of any such critique to lay persons who happen to deploy a version of such theorizing. The third, and more contentious point, is the notion that, somehow or other, Cartesian theorizing is built into some of our uses of language for non-theoretical purposes.

This paper addresses a range of theoretical issues which are the topic of recent social psychological and related research concerned with the “new racism.” We critically examine examples of such research in order to explore how analyst concerns with anti-racist political activism are surreptitiously privileged in explanations of social interaction, often at the expense of and in preference to the work of examining participants' own formulations of those same activities. Such work is contrasted with an ethnomethodologically-informed, discursive psychology which seeks to the explore how participants' talk is responsively oriented to foreclosing the same sort of critique implicitly made available in new racism research as a way for speakers to account for their own and others' activities within the controversy which that same body of research seeks to settle. More specifically, we examine how the rhetorical context of controversy surrounding race and racism is imminent to the situated activities whereby speakers provide for its relevance and not, as assumed in new racism research, some independent factor affecting that interaction. Finally, we conclude with an analysis of an episode of talk recorded in a social science interview having as its topic the nature of cross-cultural contact in which the participants take up the issue of racism as a way of managing the conflicting demands with which they are confronted in accounting for their involvement as Western expatriates living in the Middle East. Throughout our analysis of these materials, the issue of racism is approached for how it features as a participant concern, raised by speakers in the course of attending to the immediate situated interactional business in which they are engaged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper responds to, and comments on, Coulter's (1999) critique of discursive psychology with particular reference to how cognition is conceptualized theoretically and analytically. It first identifies a number of basic misreadings of discursive psychological writings, which distort and, at times, reverse its position on the status of cognition. Second, it reviews the main ways in which cognition, mental states, and thoughts have been analytically conceptualized in discursive psychology (respecification of topics from mainstream psychology, studies of the psychological thesaurus in action, and studies of the way psychological issues are managed). Third, it considers two of Coulter's substantive issues: the role of correct usage and the role of conceptual vs. empirical analysis. A series of problems are identified with Coulter's development of both of these issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, various attempts have been made to advance a project sometimes characterized as "discursive psychology". Grounded in what its proponents term "social constructionism", the discursive approach to the elucidation of ‘mental‘ phenomena is here contrasted to an ethnomethodological position informed by the later work of Wittgenstein. In particular, it is argued that discursive psychology still contains Cartesian residua, notwithstanding its professed objective of expurgating Cartesian thought from the behavioral sciences. One principal issue has been the confusion of "conceptual analysis" with the empirical study of speech practices. If these distinct enterprises are conflated, the critical achievements of conceptual analysis are obscured or even misconstrued. A different picture of how best to analyze human conduct and mentality emerges if the lessons of Wittgensteinian grammatical analysis are preserved and extended, one more compatible with several themes in ethnomethodology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that referential perspective on discourse both poses problems for the analysis of frames and ignores important semiotic dynamics of the framing process. Frame analysis critically highlights processes of signification as a key dynamic for collection action. However, while it usefully focuses on the ideological problems, its proponents have failed to problematize the role of discourse in these processes. While the ideological visions structured by frames are exposed as contested and dynamic, the discourse used in framing is taken to be a generally straight-forward bearer of meanings. Drawing on the discourse theory of the Bakhtin Circle and work in sociocultural psychology, the article proposes an alternative framework emphasizing the analysis of discursive repertoires.

The article presents a discussion on a commentary related to positive objectivity with reference to two books, namely, "Culture and Agency: The Place of Culture in Social Theory," by Margaret Archer and "Meaning and Moral Order: Explorations in Cultural Analysis," by Robert Wuthnow. Wuthnow redefines all aspects of culture, replacing meaning with objective elements of discursive behavior. Culture consists of meanings which represent the individual's interpretations of reality. Wuthnow advocates a post-structuralist approach to culture which focuses on codes which are systematic patterns of relation and symbolic boundaries. Interpretations and intentions represent two actions in relation to the code that are essential parts of a cultural analysis. Archer rests her analysis on the existence of universal contradictions and complementarities, a world of textual ideas that is separate from people's meanings. Her book centrally conflates the cultural system with socio-cultural interaction. The key to explaining independent socio-cultural variations lies in how the social distribution of interests and power actually gel with the logic of cultural system at a given time.

This paper develops the ideas of rhetorical psychology by applying them to some basic Freudian concepts. In so doing, the paper considers whether there might be a ‘Dialogic Unconscious‘. So far rhetorical psychology has tended to concentrate upon conscious thought rather than on the unconscious. It has suggested that thinking is modelled on argument and dialogue, and that rhetoric provides the means of opening up matters for thought and discussion. However, rhetoric may also provide the means for closing down topics and, thereby, provide the means of repression. It will be suggested that language is not merely expressive but it is also repressive. Moreover, the repressive aspects of language are built into the very practices of dialogue. In learning language, we learn the codes for socially appropriate ways of speaking. These must be acquired as habits, so that we learn to repress routinely the desire to transgress the codes of appropriate speech. Thus, the routine use of language provides the resources for repression. If language is repressive, then this applies equally to the language of psycho-analysis itself. Freud‘s famous case histories, such as that of Dora, can be re-examined, in order to see what Freud‘s own theory of repression was itself repressing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]