Discursive Psychological Perspective Research Articles

Light At The End Of The Tunnel? The Staging of Expertise During the COVID-19 Vaccination Campaign

In this paper, we compare the governmental and public framings of expertise in the Dutch Covid-19 vaccination campaign in the period between January 1st and April 30th, 2021. Specifically, we collected all statements regarding vaccination on three interrelated stages: (1) the official press conferences; (2) Twitter, for responses to government policies; and (3) political motions that were put forward by Members of Parliament in the days following the press conferences. We combine an interactional framing approach with a discursive psychological perspective to get insights into how framings between stages modify, contest, or build upon each other. We argue that the press conferences show a persistent technocratic framing, in the sense that a direct line between science and policy is assumed and promoted. Unlike the first period of the COVID-19 crisis in 2020, experts are not often quoted initially, but key political actors themselves act as responsible for the message that there is light at the end of the tunnel, if only citizens will get vaccinated. Once the AstraZeneca vaccine comes under fire, however, experts are again held accountable for the policy message. Throughout, governmental policies are disputed on Twitter and in Parliament, albeit in different ways, by making hidden moralities relevant, such as the government’s assumed complacency, rigidity, and inability to explain policies with the available evidence.

How diabetes forum-users complain about others’ expectations: Troubles-telling and troubles-receiving

This article offers a qualitative analysis of two instances of troubles-telling threads on a diabetes forum, with a specific focus on how these instances contribute to constructing a way to manage others’ expectations concerning how persons diagnosed with diabetes control their condition. From the perspective of conversation analysis and discursive psychology, this article shows some recurrent features of both troubles-telling (namely announcement, stake inoculation and self-deprecation) and of troubles-receiving (namely appreciation, second stories, escalation). Our analysis furthermore shows how inadequate expectations from family members are judged differently from those of health professionals. The latter are judged more harshly for what seems a lack of professional competence, whereas the former are more easily pardoned but pose a particular challenge in that patients do not wish to remove these persons from their lives. Through this analysis, we contribute to showing a particularly important function of patient fora, namely allowing patients to tell troubles about others’ expectations and to receive support and advice for these circumstances that put a heavy emotional burden.

Red-pilled mama bears and enlightened power goddesses: Discursive constructions of feminine identities in a conspiracy theory space.

Previous research into the gendered social identity work involved in conspiracy theories (CTs) has largely focused on expressions of masculinity. The present study investigates the employment and mobilization of feminine identities in online Covid-19 conspiracy theory seminars through a critical discursive psychological perspective. The analysis finds three interpretative repertoires for representing the pandemic: the totalitarianism repertoire, the corrupt medical profession repertoire and the awakening repertoire. The most prominent feminine subject position constructed in relation to these repertoires is a maternal identity that functions as a category entitlement: mothers are represented as having a unique viewpoint on the purported pandemic conspiracy by virtue of their supposed inherent morality and concern for the welfare of children. Mothers are depicted as the cultural reproducers of the group, tasked with keeping the(ir) children safe from the influence of the conspiracy. Moreover, women are persuaded to take part in anti-conspiracy action by drawing on notions of empowerment, self-actualization, and sisterhood. These findings suggest that feminine identities, and maternal identities in particular, play a key role in the mobilizing power of CTs.

Cognition-in-interaction: A Discursive Psychological Perspective of Novice Language Teacher Cognition

Teacher cognition has been an important agenda of language teacher education in recent decades, and it has advanced the field’s understanding of L2 teachers’ work. Thus far, language teacher cognition has been understood from different epistemological perspectives and researched with different methodological approaches. Given that teacher cognition is social and situational, more research is needed from an emic perspective to understand how teachers develop and renew their cognitions in their professional context. This paper adopts a discursive psychological perspective on teacher cognition, investigating novice teacher cognition using applied conversation analysis. As part of a more extensive study, the study offers an in-depth analysis of novice Chinese EFL teachers’ thinking, knowing, understanding, conceptualising, and stance-taking regarding language teaching. The teachers were recruited through a combination of convenience and snowball sampling strategies. The dataset includes 330 minutes of classroom teaching, 217 minutes of interviews, and 605 minutes of video-based guided reflection on teaching. The data revealed the key theme in teachers’ understanding of 1) focusing on linguistic knowledge, 2) establishing teacher authority, and 3) developing practical pedagogical knowledge. The findings reveal teachers’ moment-by-moment cognition-in-interaction and multiple roles in facilitating learning. Substantial implications are put forward for teacher learning and teacher education.

Mental health rehabilitees’ agency construction and promotion in community-based transitional work programme

ABSTRACT Purpose The integration of mental health rehabilitees into the labour market is an important policy objective everywhere in the world. The international Clubhouse organization is a third-sector actor that offers community-based psychosocial rehabilitation and supports and promotes rehabilitees’ state of acting and exerting power over their lives, including their (re)employment. In this article, we adopt the perspective of discursive psychology and ask how mental health rehabilitees’ agency is constructed and ideally also promoted in the Clubhouse-based Transitional Employment (TE) programme. Methods The data consisted of 26 video-recorded TE meetings in which staff and rehabilitees of one Finnish Clubhouse discussed ways to further their contacts with potential employers. The analysis was informed by discursive psychology, which has been heavily influenced by conversation analysis. Results The analysis demonstrated how rehabilitees adopt agentic positions in respect to TE-related future activities, and how Clubhouse staff promote and encourage but also discourage and invalidate these agentic positionings. The analysis demonstrated the multifaceted nature of agency and agency promotion in the TE programme. Conclusions Although ideally, Clubhouse activities are based on equal opportunities, in everyday interaction practices, the staff exercise significant power over the question whose agency is promoted and validated in the TE programme.

Accounting for Sexual Issues Related to Cancer

Cancer and its treatments cause significant changes in sexuality that affect the quality of life of both patients and their partners. As these issues are not always discussed with healthcare professionals, cancer patients turn to online health communities to find answers to questions or for emotional support pertaining to sexual issues. By using a discursive psychological perspective, we explore the social actions that participants in online health forums perform when discussing sexuality. Data were collected by entering search terms in the search bars of three online health forums. Our analysis of 213 threads, containing 1,275 posts, provides insight into how participants who present themselves as women with cancer account for their sexual issues and, in doing so, orient to two intertwined norms: Having untroubled sex is part of a couple’s relationship, and male partners are entitled to having untroubled sex. We discuss the potential harmful consequences of orienting to norms related to sexual behaviour. Yet, our findings can also help healthcare professionals in broaching the topic of sexuality in conversations with cancer patients. The insights of this study into what female patients themselves treat as relevant can assist health professionals in better aligning with patients’ interactional concerns.

Creativity: Celebrations and tensions

AbstractIn 1950, the President of the American Psychological Association emphasised the economic and political importance of creativity for US society. His account of creativity exhibits a number of tensions that can be identified in other psychologists' theories and conceptualisations of creativity. This paper considers the tensions from the perspective of critical discursive psychology. In the terms of that approach, the tensions derive from multiple non‐academic discourses around creativity, including popular discourses of creativity and art. The paper argues that conceptualisations of creativity from academic psychology have in turn entered wider discourses, invoked, for example, in recent celebrations of the global sector of the creative and cultural industries (CCI). The tensions within psychology's conceptualisations are significant, however, because they raise questions about the extent to which the psychology of creativity has a common reference and coheres around the study of a single phenomenon.

‘It’s time we invested in stronger borders’: media representations of refugees crossing the English Channel by boat

ABSTRACT Refugees crossing the Mediterranean Sea in small boats has become a common sight in the media, particularly since the so-called ‘refugee crisis’ in 2015. The number of boats crossing the English Channel between the French and UK coasts has been increasing as other migration routes have been closed down. This article reports the findings of a discourse analysis of 96 UK newspaper articles published in December 2018 when the daily crossings were referred to as a ‘major crisis’. Adopting a broadly critical discursive psychology perspective, we identify the use of three main interpretative repertoires used within the media reporting. Firstly, a ‘secure the borders’ repertoire which positions the UK’s borders as porous and easily breached, secondly, a ‘smuggling is immoral’ repertoire which works to position smugglers as to blame for the current ‘crisis’ and removes responsibility for the crisis from the Government, and finally, a ‘desperate people’ repertoire which worked to position the refugees themselves as vulnerable and in need of protection, but also as people who will engage in risky behaviours. We suggest that the use of these repertoires ultimately functions to obscure the need for safe and legal migration routes to the UK.

Conflicts Around Elder Care in Mass Media: A Case Study of a Swedish TV-Documentary and the Reactions to it in Public Discourse

Public opinion regarding the organization of welfare and elder care are issues which have mainly been studied as expressions of individual attitudes or conflicting ideologies. By contrast, and departing from an understanding of the importance of context and societal rhetoric, this study explores a media event in the form of a Swedish TV documentary about problems in elder care and the reactions to it that were published in printed news media. The study departs from a discursive psychological perspective and focuses on what is taken for granted with regard to how elder care should be organized, and which conflicts are articulated in the different articles and opinion pieces that were published during the month following the broadcast.
 The study also shows how elder care is not a singular issue, but always interconnected with issues such as citizenship, identity, migration, and the legitimacy of the political and legal system. It was found that right to formal care for older people to a large extent was articulated as a right by virtue of citizenship.

"You are in Trouble!": A Discursive Psychological Analysis of Threatening Language in Chinese Cellphone Fraud Interactions.

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.

The Legal Certification of Sex in Belgium over Time. Ideological Effects and Practical Implications

<p><br />Belgium has recently modified the way ‘sex’ is legally certified for trans* people following the principle of self-determination. However, like in most countries, this modification has not changed the way ‘sex’ is determined for all members of society, being limited to trans* people. How is sex legally certified for different categories of people in Belgium and what are the effects thereof? Drawing on the theoretical perspective of discursive psychology (DP), we consider sex/gender categories as something constructed in discourse – in this case, legislative discourse – and not as an essentialist and pre-discursive reality. Categories are thus an effect of discourse: what discourse accomplishes or constructs. Based on this premise, this paper aims at elucidating the ideological effects and practical implications of the legal certification of sex in Belgium. The effects of the legislative discourse are ideological in the sense that they establish social norms, in this case, regarding sex/gender, leading to practical implications in everyday life. To elucidate these effects, we first identified Belgian civil law on the legal certification of sex since the establishment of Belgium as a sovereign state. We then applied a DP-inspired analytical device comprising a qualitative content analysis and the examination of content variability. The variability of discourse is a key analytical tool to elucidate the effects of discourse since these are not directly observable. The results show that the analysed legislation constructs women and men as natural categories. This is carried out through: 1) the establishment of a distinction between the population at large (unmarked) and those ‘outside the norm’ (marked subjects: ‘transgender’, ‘intersex’); 2) the lack of legal regulation of the attribution of sex markers at birth, being taken for granted; 3) the regulation of the latter only in ‘abnormal cases’ (called ‘children suffering from sexual ambiguity’); and 4) the fact that gender identity is recognised as a criterion for the attribution of sex markers only for trans* people, presented as an exception to the norm. This variability reifies sexual dimorphism and naturalises the correspondence between ‘biological sex’ and gender identity, thereby constituting ‘normative’ and ‘deviant’ sex/gender categories. The results are discussed in light of the practical implications that this legal norm has in everyday life.</p><p> </p>

Un-Certainty as a Pragmatic Resource for Psychiatric Argumentation: a Diachronical and Diatextual Approach

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.

The preference for self-direction as a resource for parents’ socialisation practices

ABSTRACTThis paper focuses on practices that parents employ when they seek to forward some course of action for their child and manage children’s resistance to these attempts. Combining conversation analytic tools with discursive psychological insights, it will argue that more coercive and invasive behaviour management practices can be systematically deferred in favour or actions that give children the opportunity to develop their own solutions to problem behaviour. This is analyzed in terms of preference organisation, specifically employing the notion of a dispreferred initiating action, allowing a consideration of how parents provide opportunities for, and hence prefer as a next action, self-direction. This argument will be grounded in an examination of the notion of socialisation, as a basis for proposing how it can be understood from a discursive psychological perspective. The resulting respecification of the idea of socialisation will be supported by an interrogation of the practices and structures involved when issuing a dispreferred action.

Internet users’ neutralization of the morality of advertisement blocking

Abstract Internet revenue is currently threatened by an increase in the use of advertisement blocking software. This presents a moral problem for Internet users, as by blocking advertisements, they deprive content creators of income for their work. Four hundred and thirty-six comments taken from three naturally occurring online discussions were analyzed from a discursive psychological perspective to explore how posters engage with online debates concerning the morality of blocking advertisements. Posters were found to orientate to a moral dimension against blocking online advertisements. They sought to manage this moral dimension by drawing upon the neutralization techniques of denial of responsibility, denial of injury, condemnation of the condemners, and appeals to higher loyalty. Two aspects of neutralization discourse have also been shown to be used in a novel manner. Rather than denying the victim, Internet users adopt the subject position of “victim” for themselves. Rather than denying injury, they present themselves as injured by online advertising. Posters here present blocking online advertisements as being in their own best interests. In order to change this behavior, then, advertisers must reposition themselves with consumers, to orientate to the presence of advertising online as mutually beneficial, rather than parasitic.

‘I don’t think there is any moral basis for taking money away from people’: using discursive psychology to explore the complexity of talk about tax

ABSTRACTThe increasing recognition of the negative impact of income inequality has highlighted the importance of taxation which can function as a redistributive mechanism. Previous critical social psychological research found that talk about restricting the welfare state, that is funded through tax, is formed of ideology that supports the maintenance of income inequality. Therefore, this research explores how speakers use talk about tax to justify income inequality during a UK BBC radio discussion, ‘Moral Maze: The moral purpose of tax’ which involved public figures discussing the role of tax. This programme was analysed from a critical discursive psychological perspective. It was found that two contrasting constructions of tax were presented: tax as a collective responsibility or tax as an individual burden, whereby speakers drew on social justice and individualistic ideology respectively. Arguments for high tax rates are problematic due to the acceptability of inequality in a meritocracy. By presenting wealthy individuals as more deserving than the less affluent, arguments for higher tax come to be challenged.

The social functions of teachers’ beliefs in an online class

This study presents an investigation of teachers’ beliefs about working with English learners, as constructed in online class discussions. Using conversation and discourse analysis from a discursive psychology (DP) perspective, analysis focuses on the discursive production of beliefs and the social actions achieved by this production in interaction. By orienting to teachers’ beliefs as interactionally emergent phenomena, findings highlight the ways that teachers account for their belief claims and the ways that teachers’ statements of belief work to perform certain social functions within the forum itself, including affiliation and disagreement. Implications for teacher education and for the potential of DP to contribute to research on teachers’ beliefs are discussed.

Iranian Housewives Motives for English Language Learning from a Discursive Psychology Perspective

In this study, the principles of discursive psychology are used to critically analyze the accounts of Iranian housewife English learners on their motives and intentions for language learning. In the course of the analysis of semi-structured interviews with these housewives, four interpretative repertoires were identified: 'learning English for meeting the child’s need', 'learning English for a global need', 'learning English for a social need', and 'learning English for a psychological need'. The assumptions underlying these repertoires suggest that individuals’ identities are tied to that of social pressure present in the family and the community. The results also indicate that these women’s perspectives on the notion of housewife are changing and fail to fully conform to the culturally accepted societal norms imposed on them in the society.

Monitoring mobilization: a discursive psychological analysis of online mobilizing practices

PurposeThe purpose of the paper is to describe the ways in which people use language to achieve mobilization. Recognizing and anticipating the discursive practices that are used online, for instance for mobilization, increasingly is a primary concern for professionals in crisis communication or issue management.Design/methodology/approachA discursive psychological perspective is drawn upon to conduct a qualitative analysis of the interactional and rhetorical features of mobilization on two Facebook event pages, and to discover patterns of talk.FindingsThree dominant discursive patterns were identified: disputing the integrity of authorities, constructing a positive atmosphere and a feeling of “togetherness” and constructing decisive identities. These activities play an important role in mobilization and are accomplished by the use of language. Furthermore, it demonstrates that mobilization involves the concern of not overtly presenting oneself as a victim or activist.Research limitations/implicationsInsights into the discursive strategies people use to achieve mobilization are important for recognizing these discursive phenomena during media monitoring. The analysis presented in this paper does not allow the authors to draw general conclusions nor the success of the strategies in terms of the actual events.Practical implicationsThe study offers important insights for communication professionals (for instance, in the domain of crisis communication), enabling them to recognize mobilizing practices in other contexts and designing an adequate response.Social implicationsThe study exposes those issues that are important for mobilizing a community and creating public engagement.Originality/valueIn addition to other studies on the role of language in mobilization, the current study adds a perspective that takes into account both the rhetorical and the interactional features of mobilization. Furthermore, the findings are implemented in a training for professionals in the domain of crisis communication.

‘If you look at me like at a piece of meat, then that’s a problem’ – women in the center of the male gaze. Feminist Poststructuralist Discourse Analysis as a tool of critique

ABSTRACTThis article proposes a discursive approach to beauty, which it illustrates with a close data analysis of women's relationship with the ‘male gaze’. In gender and feminist studies, the male gaze is invoked with reference to the patriarchal surveillance of women's bodies. The article complements studies that approach the surveillance as a socio-cultural phenomenon by investigating it as a discursive accomplishment of a social relation and identification. Taking a Feminist Poststructuralist Discourse Analysis approach to the matter (and combining it with a discursive psychological perspective), this article focuses on the complexities and ambiguities underwriting individuals’ personalized ways of dealing with being looked at. Women's positioning to the male gaze by means of culturally available discourses is found to reveal ambiguous sites of agency and submission within its scope. Examining them, the article addresses the importance of combining a feminist poststructuralist perspective on the relations of gender with women's lived understandings of being implicated in them. (How) can lived and academic sensibilities be set side by side in gender research? Is there a methodology of discourse analysis that facilitates this?

Van waarheidsvinding naar evaluatie

Abstract From truth finding to evaluating practices: A discursive psychological analysis of the construction of Twitter rumour related to a robbery of a jewellery store in the NetherlandsIn this study, the construction of rumour on Twitter during a specific crisis is analysed from a discursive psychological perspective. This perspective treats psychological concepts such as identities as discursive constructions. The selected case is the robbery of a jewellery store in Deurne, a village in the Netherlands. The jeweller’s wife was said to have shot two of the robbers. Although this fact was not officially confirmed, people used particular discursive strategies to present the act of the jeweller’s wife as factual, which influenced the way the media reported on this case, as well as the reaction of the prosecutor, which was described as premature. Four dominant discursive patterns were detected, that is: normalizing the act, evaluating the act, upgrading the act and anticipating on the consequences of the act. Furthermore, it is demonstrated how critical tweets, displaying a concern for nuancing the overall tendency of the tweets, were designed in a way that downplayed their overt critical character. Implications of the analysis for crisis communication professionals are discussed.