Understanding Beliefs, Identity, Conceptions, and Motivations from a Discursive Psychology Perspective

Abstract

Discursive psychology is a relatively new discipline that has emerged at the interface of sociology and social psychology. Instead of taking language as a neutral means to detect cognitive entities in the mind, including beliefs, identity, conceptions, and motivations, discursive psychologists investigate how people mobilize belief, identity, conception, and motivation talk to achieve goals in interactions with others. Drawing on interviews involving students who talk about careers choices relative to the sciences, we exemplify in this chapter the social, situated, and cultural nature of language that provides resources to realize the interview. Discursive psychology is an emergent framework that provides for a new, alternative, and critical perspective to phenomena of interest to science educators.