See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/245940201

Discourse Analysis as a way of analysing naturally occurring talk

Article · January 1997

CITATIONS READS

594 10,040

1 author:

Jonathan Potter
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
173 PUBLICATIONS 23,491 CITATIONS

SEE PROFILE

All content following this page was uploaded by Jonathan Potter on 12 October 2017.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

 Discursive Psychology and the Study
of Naturally Occurring Talk
11
Jonathan Potter

Abstract
This chapter introduces a style of discourse analysis known as discursive psychology.
This is focused on the study of texts and talk as social practices. Basic theoretical
and methodological features of discursive psychology are described as well as
the kinds of questions that are developed in this style of work. Four features
that distinguish discursive psychology from conversation analysis are noted.
This schematic overview is followed by an illustration of the logic of analy-
sis which is focused on the attempt to understand why Princess Diana used ‘I
dunno’ twice during her well-known interview with Martin Bashir. This involves
considering the way stake and interest become participants’ concerns and the
way that stake can be managed, or even ‘inoculated’ against, by using particular
discursive constructions. This is further supported by analysing extracts from
newspaper reports and relationship counselling sessions.

Keywords:
discursive psychology, discourse analysis, interaction, stake, fact construction.

This chapter will focus on the way discourse analysis can be used to study naturally
occurring talk. Discourse analysis as a label can be a source of confusion as different
forms of discourse analytic work have developed in the different disciplinary envi-
ronments of linguistics, cognitive psychology, social psychology, sociolinguistics
and post-structuralism (for overviews see Phillips and Jørgensen, 2002; Wooffitt,
2005). This chapter will focus on a strand of discourse research often called discursive

11-Silverman 3e 4074-CH-11 (Part V).indd 187 16/08/2010 2:08:13 PM

 188 Talk · Jonathan Potter

psychology (sometimes DP below). This is not just a method; it is a broad approach

to social life that combines meta-theoretical assumptions, theoretical ideas, analytic
orientations and bodies of work. It is a perspective that draws heavily on conversation
analytic work (see Heritage, this volume).

Discursive Psychology

Discursive psychology is characterised by a meta-theoretical emphasis on anti-realism

and constructionism. That is, DP emphasises the way versions of the world, of
society, events, and inner psychological worlds, are produced in discourse. On the
one hand, this leads discursive psychologists to be concerned with participants’
constructions and how they are accomplished and undermined; and, on the other,
it leads to a recognition of the constructed and contingent nature of researchers’ own
versions of the world (Potter and Hepburn, 2008). Indeed, it treats realism, whether
developed by participants or researchers, as a rhetorical production that can itself be
decomposed and studied (Edwards et al., 1995; Gergen, 2009; Potter, 1992).
DP has an analytic commitment to studying discourse as texts and talk in social
practices. That is, the focus is not on language as an abstract entity such as a lexicon
and set of grammatical rules (in linguistics), a system of differences (in structuralism),
a set of rules for transforming statements (in Foucauldian genealogies). Instead, it is
the medium for interaction; analysis of discourse becomes, then, analysis of what
people do. One theme that is particularly emphasised here is the rhetorical or argu-
mentative organisation of talk and texts; claims and versions are constructed to
undermine alternatives (Billig, 1991, 1996).
This conception of the focus of DP may make it seem to be pitched at a level of
analysis somewhere between studies of individual psychology and studies of struc-
tural sociology. On this reading it would be an approach falling squarely within the
traditional remit of social psychology or micro-sociology. However, these kinds of
distinctions have been made problematic by DP.
On the one hand, DP has eaten away at traditional psychological notions by
reformulating them in discursive terms. For example, a classic psychological notion
such as a cognitive script can be reworked by considering the sorts of business that
people do by ‘script formulating’ descriptions of their own or others’ behaviour
(Edwards, 1994). The suggestion is that there is a whole field of discursive study
which has hardly been touched in mainstream psychology (Edwards, 1997; Edwards
and Potter, 1992, 2005).
On the other hand, the micro–macro distinction has also been made problematic.
It has been blurred by three kinds of work. First, there are now a range of conversa-
tion analytic studies which are concerned with the way in which the institutionally
specific properties of a setting such as a news interview, a doctor–patient consultation

11-Silverman 3e 4074-CH-11 (Part V).indd 188 16/08/2010 2:08:13 PM

 Discursive Psychology and the Study of Naturally Occurring Talk 189

or an award ceremony are constituted in talk rather than being structurally determined
in any simple way (Drew and Heritage, 1992; see Heritage, this volume). For example,
pedagogic interaction certainly happens in school classrooms, and yet much of what
happens in classrooms is not pedagogic (playing around, chatting) while much rec-
ognisably pedagogic interaction (‘test’ questions, encouraging discovery) happens
over family breakfast tables or with a partner in front of the television. Second, there
is work on the way people produce descriptions or stories of social organisation in
their talk. For example, Wetherell and Potter (1992) studied the way particular
constructions of social groups, processes of conflict and influence, histories and so
on were drawn on as practical resources for blaming minority groups for their own
disadvantaged social position. That is, social structure becomes part of interaction
as it is worked up, invoked and reworked (Potter, 2003a). Third, there is recent work
in DP that attempts to highlight the way psychological notions are constructed in
and for institutions, and how they can constitute some of the characteristic features
of organisations (Edwards, 2008; Potter & Hepburn, 2003).
In contemporary DP the overwhelming analytic focus is on the analysis of natu-
ralistic materials: audio or video recordings of people interacting in everyday or
institutional settings. Although much earlier discursive work used open-ended
interviews, the virtues of working with naturalistic materials and the shortcomings
of interviews have become more and more apparent (see Potter & Hepburn, 2005;
Silverman, 2007). DP is overwhelmingly qualitative, although the principled argu-
ment is not against quantification per se, but against the way counting and coding
often obscure the activities being done with talk and texts (see Heritage, this vol-
ume; Peräkylä, this volume; Schegloff, 1993).

Discursive Psychology and Method

In much traditional social research, method is understood as something that can

be codified with specific guidelines that, if not guaranteeing good research, are a
necessary condition for its conduct. Indeed, research conclusions are often justified
by reference to the correct and complete following of procedures such as operation-
alising variables, getting high levels of inter-rater reliability for codings, and so on.
DP is not like this. The analytic procedure used to arrive at claims is often quite
different from the way those claims are justified.
Like most research practices in the natural and social sciences, doing discourse
analysis has an important element of craft skill; it is sometimes more like sexing a
chicken than following the recipe for a mild Chicken Rogan Josh (although, come
to think of it, that is rather a craft skill too!). This makes it hard to describe formally
and it takes time to learn. But that does not mean that the claims are necessarily
hard to evaluate – if you cannot easily say precisely how someone has learned to

11-Silverman 3e 4074-CH-11 (Part V).indd 189 16/08/2010 2:08:13 PM

 190 Talk · Jonathan Potter

ride a bike, you do not have so much difficulty saying whether they have fallen off
or not. Likewise, there are a range of ways in which the adequacy of discourse ana-
lytic studies can be evaluated, including a focus on deviant cases, checking that par-
ticipants’ themselves orient to claimed phenomena, coherence with other discourse
analytic studies, and, most importantly, the evaluation that readers themselves can
make when they are presented with transcript alongside its analytic interpretations
(Potter, 2003b). Nor does it mean that it cannot be learned – it is not merely depend-
ent on intuitions or imagination, but learning the requisite sets of skills.
In traditional stories of method in social research you have a question and then
you search for a method to answer that question. For example, you may be inter-
ested in the ‘factors’ that lead to condom use in sexual encounters, and ponder
whether to use an experiment with vignettes, some open-ended interviews or dis-
course analysis to check them out. Adopting DP in this way is a recipe for confusion.
Some questions are simply not suited to DP. For example, the kinds of assumptions
about factors and outcomes that underpin a lot of thinking in traditional social psy-
chology and sociology do not mesh with its rhetorical and normative logic. Rather
than conceiving of a world of discrete variables with discrete effects, in DP there
are constructions and versions that may be adopted, responded to or undermined.
Thus a categorisation, say, may be undermined by a particularisation; no upshot is
guaranteed (Billig, 1991). Norms are oriented to: that is, they are not templates for
action but provide a way of interpreting deviations. The absence of a return greeting
does not disconfirm a regularity, rather it is the basis for inference: the recipient is
rude, sad, deaf perhaps (Heritage, 1988). The general point is that the phenomena
that DP studies are highly ordered but not determined – the patterning is a product
of ordered choices as interaction unfolds in settings.
So what kinds of questions are coherent within DP? Given the general focus
is on texts and talk as social practices, there has been a dual focus on the prac-
tices themselves and on the resources that are drawn on in those practices. Take
gender inequalities for example. Studies have considered both the way in which
such inequalities are constructed, made factual and justified in talk, and they have
also considered the resources (‘interpretative repertoires’, identities, category
systems, metaphors) that are used to manufacture coherent and persuasive justi-
fications that work to sustain those inequalities (Clarke et al., 2004; Stokoe, 2003;
Wetherell et al., 1987).

Naturally Occurring Talk as Topic

I am going to focus here on DP specifically as applied to naturally occurring talk.

Naturally occurring talk is spoken language produced entirely independently of the
actions of the researcher, whether it is everyday conversation over the telephone,

11-Silverman 3e 4074-CH-11 (Part V).indd 190 16/08/2010 2:08:13 PM

 Discursive Psychology and the Study of Naturally Occurring Talk 191

the records of a company board meeting, or the interaction between doctor and
patient in a surgery. It is natural in the specific sense that it is not ‘got up’ by the
researcher using an interview schedule, a questionnaire, an experimental protocol
or some such social research technology. The appropriate test for whether the talk
is naturally occurring is whether the talk would have taken place in much the same
way if the researcher had been taken ill that morning. Experiments, focus groups
and interviews would have had to be cancelled; recordings of therapy sessions or
family mealtimes would have carried on regardless.
It is important to note what is distinctive about the considerable body of earlier
discursive psychological work that has used open-ended interviews. When inter-
views are treated as a machinery for harvesting psychologically and linguistically
interesting responses, the research is inevitably focused on those elements of inter-
views contributed by the participant rather than those from the researcher. However,
it is possible to conceptualise interviews as arenas for interaction between two or
more parties. That is, we can treat them as a form of natural conversational interac-
tion, by analysing them in the same way that we might a telephone conversation
between friends or the cross-examination in a court room.
Widdicombe and Wooffitt (1995) provide one of the most thoroughgoing attempts
to use interviews in this way, treating materials originally collected for a study of
social identity as examples of unfolding conversational interaction where the sense
of social categories is refined and reworked (see also Edwards, 2003).

How Is Discursive Psychology Related to

Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis?

Contemporary discursive psychology draws heavily on the analytic methods of

conversation analysis (CA; see Heritage, this volume). There are, however, at least
four areas of divergence.

1 Construction. DP is constructionist in the sense that it takes a specific focus

on the way versions and descriptions are assembled to perform actions. The
construction and use of descriptions is a topic of study. Although ethnomethod-
ologists have been critical of the social constructionist tradition in social science,
it is not clear that there is so much tension between this take on construction
and that in ethnomethodology or conversation analysis (for some arguments,
see Button and Sharrock, 1993; Potter, 1996; Potter and Hepburn, 2008).
2 Rhetoric. Whereas conversation analytic work is focused on sequential organisation,
discursive psychology is also focused on rhetorical organisation – the way versions
are put together to counter alternatives. Often an understanding of sequential
organisation is a prerequisite for understanding rhetorical organisation.

11-Silverman 3e 4074-CH-11 (Part V).indd 191 16/08/2010 2:08:13 PM

 192 Talk · Jonathan Potter

3 Cognition. Discursive psychology is an alternative to dominant cognitivist

perspectives in psychology. It rejects the aim of explaining action by reference
to underlying cognitive states. The difficult issue of the status of cognition in
ethnomethodology and CA is a source of some disagreement (see papers in te
Molder and Potter, 2005). Edwards (1995a) has offered an anti-cognitivist read-
ing of Sacks; Potter (2006) has provided an analysis of cognitivist assumptions
in some of Drew’s conversation analytic work (e.g. Drew, 2005).
4 Epistemology. An important influence on DP has been the sociology of scientific
knowledge. This has led to a more sceptical position on issues of truth and
knowledge than is common in CA. These differences show themselves most
clearly at the level of theory and the justification of research procedures than in
the actual procedures themselves.

In the opening parts of the chapter I have addressed a number of background

issues for discourse analytic research. There are a range of other concerns to do with
transcription, interview conduct, coding, forms of validation, writing up discourse
research that there is no space to discuss. For a more detailed coverage of these
see Antaki et al. (2003), Hepburn and Potter (2003), Potter and Wetherell (1987),
Wetherell et al. (2001a, 2001b), Wiggins and Potter (2008) and Wood and Kroger
(2000). For the rest of this chapter I will focus on a particular example, with the aim
of illustrating the analytic mentality involved in discourse analytic research on talk.

Discursive Psychology and Naturally Occurring Talk

There are a wide range of different ways of analysing discourse. It is useful to make
a distinction between studies that focus on the kinds of resources drawn on in dis-
course and the practices in which those resources are used. The emphasis here will
be on the latter kind of study. What I will do is highlight some of the concerns that
analysis works with, and one of the best ways of doing this is to work with some
specific materials. It will try to avoid the common goal in writing about method
that is to provide justifications to other academics rather than assist in the conduct
of analysis itself.

Princess Diana and ‘I dunno’

I have chosen to start with a piece of talk that is interesting, and probably familiar, at
least in its broad outline, to many readers. It comes from a BBC television interview;
the interviewer is Martin Bashir and the interviewee is the late Princess Diana Spencer.

11-Silverman 3e 4074-CH-11 (Part V).indd 192 16/08/2010 2:08:13 PM

 Discursive Psychology and the Study of Naturally Occurring Talk 193

Extract 1
Bashir: The ↑Quee:n described nineteen ninety tw↓o: (0.2)
as her (0.2) <annus (0.4) horribilis>. (0.5)
Princess: [ ((adjusts posture)) ]
Bashir: [.Dhh and it was in that] year: that (0.2) Andrew
Morton’s book about you was published.
Princess: Mhm. ((nods and blinks))
Bashir: Dhhh did ↑you ever: (0.6) meet ↓Andrew Morton,
[or personally (.) help him with the] book?
Princess: [ ((raises eyebrows, shakes head)) ]
Princess: I never- (0.3) I [never met him. ]
Princess: [((shakes head))]
(0.4)
Princess: No.
[ (1.5) ]
Princess: [((shakes head and purses lips))] (0.8)
Bashir: Did you ever (0.2) personally (0.2) assist
him with the writing of his book.
(0.8)
Princess: A lot of people .hhh ((clears throat))
saw the distress (0.4) that my life (.) was (.) in. (0.8)
Princess: And they felt- (0.8) felt it was a supportive thing to h:elp. (1.0)
Princess: In the way that they did. [ (2.4) ]
Princess: [((purses lips))]
Bashir: Did you: (0.6) allow your frien:ds, >your
close friends< to speak to Andrew °Morton°?
Princess: Yes I did. (1.0)
Princess: ((nodding)) Ye[s I d]id.
Bashir: [°Why°.] (0.7)
Princess: Hh I was: [(0.5) at the end of my tether.]
Princess: [ ((shaking head)) ]
(0.4)

11-Silverman 3e 4074-CH-11 (Part V).indd 193 16/08/2010 2:08:13 PM

 194 Talk · Jonathan Potter

Princess: I was: [(0.9) desperate.]

Princess: [((shaking head))]
(1.5)
Princess: >I ↑think I was so fed up with being< (0.2) .h
see:n (0.3) as someone who was a ba:sket case. (0.8)
Princess: Cos I am a very strong person, .h (0.2)
and I know (0.3) .h that causes complications. (0.8)
Princess: In the system (.) that I (0.4) live in.
[ (4.0) ]
Princess: [((smiles then purses lips))]
Bashir: How would a book (0.7) change that.
Princess: [ ↑I dunno. .hh ]
Princess: [((raises eyebrows, looks away))]
Maybe people have a better understanding, (0.6)
maybe there’s a lot of women out there, .h
who suffer. (0.9)
Princess: On the same level but in a different environment? (0.2)
Princess: Who are unable to: .h (0.2) stand up for themselves? (0.2)
Princess: Becau:se (0.3) .h their self-esteem is (0.2)
c-cut [into two, (0.2) I dun↑no]
Princess: [ ((shakes head)) ]
(from Panorama, BBC1, 20 November 1995 – see the
Appendix for transcription conventions)

The first thing to note here is that even a short sequence of interaction of this
kind is enormously rich, and could be the startpoint for a wide range of different
studies. For example, conversation analysts have considered the way the different
interactional roles of interviewer and interviewee are produced, and the way issues
such as neutrality and evasiveness are managed (Clayman and Heritage, 2002). I am
going to pick up a theme more characteristic of discursive psychology in particular.
I am going to focus principally on just the two lines that have been arrowed–the
two ‘I dunno’s’. Why these? There are three reasons, all of which illustrate different
facets of doing discursive psychological research.
First, these fragments of talk relate to broader and established analytic concerns
with fact construction and the role of descriptions in interaction. The point, then, is
that although I have not come to this material with a pre-set hypothesis of the kind

11-Silverman 3e 4074-CH-11 (Part V).indd 194 16/08/2010 2:08:13 PM

 Discursive Psychology and the Study of Naturally Occurring Talk 195

that a social psychologist might have when designing an experiment, my way into
it is related to a wide range of prior interests, knowledge and concerns. However,
there is nothing particularly special about the topic of fact construction; a range of
different established interests could be brought to bear on this same material.
Second, these fragments are easily treated as the trivial details of interaction. If we
were to make a precis of the interaction we would probably not draw attention to
them. On the video they sound almost throwaway. However, one of the features of
talk that has been strongly emphasised by Harvey Sacks (1992) and other conversa-
tion analysts is that what may seem to be minor details can be highly significant for
interactants. Social scientists often treat talk as a conduit for information between
speakers: there is a message and it is passed from one person to another. Roy Harris
(1981) calls this the ‘telementation view of language’. When we use this picture
it is easy to imagine that what is important is some basic package of information,
and then there is a lot of rather unimportant noise added to the signal: hesitations,
pauses, overlaps, choice of specific words and so on. For discursive psychologists
this view is fundamentally misguided. Rather than treating these features of talk as
simply a blurred edge on the pure message, these features are treated as determining
precisely what action is being performed as well as providing a rich resource that
both participants and analysts use for understanding what that activity is.
It is for this reason that talk is carefully transcribed as it is delivered rather than
being rendered into the conventional ‘playscript’ that is common in many kinds
of qualitative work. Note that it is sometimes complained that such transcrip-
tion is unnecessary, unhelpful or even – sin of sins – positivistic! However, it is
important to remember that the playscript that often passes for transcript is itself
highly conventionalised and makes a set of mainly inexplicit assumptions about
interaction.
The third reason for focusing on ‘I dunno’ is that is provides a neat way of con-
trasting discursive psychology with a cognitive psychological approach to talk. What
might a cognitive psychologist make of ‘I dunno’s’? There are all sorts of possibili-
ties, but one approach that might be taken is to treat such utterances as ‘uncertainty
tokens’; that is, words or expressions that people use to report states of uncertainty.
This would be in line with the general cognitive psychological approach of relating
language use to an individual’s cognitive processes and representations (Edwards,
1997). Considering ‘I dunno’s’ therefore has the virtue of allowing us to compare
and contrast a cognitive and discursive approach to talk.
One of the notable features of discourse research is that the best way start making
sense of a set of materials like this may be to consider other materials or other sorts of
findings. At its most basic, a good feel for some of the standard features of everyday
and institutional talk is essential for producing high-quality analyses (Hutchby and
Wooffit, 2008, provide a basic introduction and overview). In this case, I suggest
that one of the ways into Princess Diana’s ‘I dunno’s’ is to consider the way issues of
stake and interest have been conceptualised in discursive psychology.

11-Silverman 3e 4074-CH-11 (Part V).indd 195 16/08/2010 2:08:13 PM

 196 Talk · Jonathan Potter

Stake as a Participant’s Concern

Work in the ethnomethodological and conversation analytic tradition has

highlighted the centrality of accountability in interaction. Discursive psychologists
dealing with psychological issues have emphasised the significance that partici-
pants place on issues of stake and interest (Edwards and Potter, 1992). People treat
each other as entities with desires, motives, institutional allegiances and so on, as
having a stake in their actions. Referencing stake is one principal way of discount-
ing the significance of an action or reworking its nature. For example, a blaming
can be discounted as merely a product of spite; an offer may be discounted as an
attempt to influence.
Here is an explicit example where the speaker invokes an interest to undercut
a (reported) claim. The extract is from a current affairs programme in which the
author Salman Rushdie is being interviewed by David Frost. Frost is asking about
the fatwa – the religious death sentence on Rushdie.

Extract 2
Frost: And how could they cancel it now? Can they cancel it – they say
they can’t.
→ Rushdie: Yeah, but you know, they would, wouldn’t they, as somebody
once said. The thing is, without going into the kind of arcana
of theology, there is no technical problem. The problem is not
technical. The problem is that they don’t want to.
(Public Broadcasting Service, 26 November 1993 – their transcript)

Rushdie’s response to the claim that the fatwa cannot be cancelled is to discount the
claim as obviously motivated. The familiar phrase ‘they would, wouldn’t they’ treats
the Iranians’ claim as something to be expected: it is the sort of thing that people
with that background, those interests, that set of attitudes would say; and it formu-
lates that predictability as shared knowledge. This extract illustrates the potential
for invoking stake and interest to discount claims.
Both discourse and conversation analysts have stressed that where some diffi-
culty or issue is widespread, there are likely to be some well-developed procedures
for dealing with it. For example, given the established procedures that exist for
managing turn taking we would expect there to be some procedures to exist for
terminating conversations, and this is what is found (Levinson, 1983; Schegloff and
Sacks, 1973). Or, to take a more discourse analytic example, given that scientists
tend to keep separate the inconsistent repertoires of terms they use for justifying
their own claims and undermining those of opponents, we would expect that some
devices would be developed for dealing with situations where those repertoires

11-Silverman 3e 4074-CH-11 (Part V).indd 196 16/08/2010 2:08:13 PM

 Discursive Psychology and the Study of Naturally Occurring Talk 197

come together; and this is what is found (Gilbert and Mulkay, 1984). Following
this logic, we might expect to find procedures that people use to resist the kind of
discounting seen in Extract 2.
Here is a candidate discursive technique for undermining discounting. It was not
the product of a systematic search; rather, I came across it while reading the news-
paper and thinking about this issue. It comes from an article in the Guardian news-
paper headlined ‘Psychiatrist reveals the agony and the lunacy of great artists’.

Extract 3
The stereotype of the tortured genius suffering for his art and losing his
mind in a sea of depression, sexual problems and drink turns out to be
largely true, a psychiatrist says today.
While scientists, philosophers and politicians can all suffer from the odd
personality defect, for real mental instability you need to look at writers and
painters, says Felix Post.
→ Dr Post was initially sceptical, but having looked at the lives of nearly 300
famous men he believes exceptional creativity and psychiatric problems are
intertwined. In some way, mental ill health may fuel some forms of creativity,
he concludes.
(Guardian, 30 June 1994)

The feature of the article that struck me was: ‘Dr Post was initially sceptical’.
Following the idea that all features of talk and texts are potentially there to do
some kind of business, we can ask why this particular feature is there. What it
seems to do is counter the potential criticism that Dr Post is perpetrating stere-
otypes about madness and creativity. His initial scepticism encourages us to treat
his conclusions as factual because they are counter to his original interests. The
facts forced him into this view.
I have suggested that such features of discourse can be understood by a medical
analogy. People can avoid catching a disease such as tuberculosis by being inocu-
lated against it. Perhaps in the same way conversationalists and writers can limit the
ease with which their talk and texts can be undermined by doing a stake inoculation
(Potter, 1996). Just as you have a jab to prevent the disease, perhaps you can inject
a piece of discourse to prevent your talk being undermined.
Let me now stand back and highlight two features of the kind of analytic men-
tality I am working with. First, in common with conversation analysts, discursive
psychologists are concerned to use evidence from the materials as far as possible
rather than basing interpretations on their own prior assumptions about people,
mind, society or whatever. In this case, note that the idea that there is a stereotype
about madness and creativity is not my own – it is introduced in the text itself.

11-Silverman 3e 4074-CH-11 (Part V).indd 197 16/08/2010 2:08:13 PM

 198 Talk · Jonathan Potter

Moreover, the analysis does not depend on this stereotype actually existing, merely
that it is invoked as an issue in this text. Second, note the way I have moved in this
analysis between conversational and textual material. Discursive psychologists have
been much more willing than conversation analysts to combine such materials.
Moreover, they have tried to avoid making a priori assumptions about differences
between the two. Both talk and texts are treated as oriented to action; both orient to
issues of stake and may be inoculated against discounting.

‘I dunno’ as a Stake Inoculation

So far, then, I have emphasised some background considerations that might help
us understand what Princess Diana’s ‘I dunno’s’ in Extract 1 are doing. One helpful
way to continue the analysis is to collect some more examples of a similar kind.
More formally, we might think of this as building a corpus for study or even coding
of a set of data. Whatever we call it, the goal is to help the analyst see patterns and
to highlight different properties of particular constructions. Although some of the
initial procedures are superficially similar, the goal is not the content analytic one of
providing counts of occurrences of particular kinds of talk within categories.
A search for ‘I don’t know’s’ through a set of materials taken from relationship
counselling sessions provided Extract 4 below. The extract comes from the start of
a long story in which the speaker, Jimmy, is describing a difficult evening in a pub
with his wife, Connie. As well as Connie and Jimmy there is a counsellor present.
One of the themes in the session is a series of complaints by Jimmy about Connie
flirting with other men. At the same time Connie has made a number of suggestions
that he is pathologically jealous and prone to seeing harmless sociability as sexual
suggestion (Edwards, 1995b).

Extract 4
Jimmy: This ↑one particular night, (0.2)
anyway (0.2) there was uh: (1.2) I didn’t-
Connie had made arrangements to ↑meet people.
(1.8)
And I didn’t want to. (0.6)
It wasn’t any other thing.
(1.6)
A:nd (0.8) we sat in the pub and
we (.) started to discuss=

11-Silverman 3e 4074-CH-11 (Part V).indd 198 16/08/2010 2:08:13 PM

 Discursive Psychology and the Study of Naturally Occurring Talk 199

=>we had a little bit of a row.< (2.0)

In the pub. (0.6)
And arguing about the time. (0.8)
U:m (.) whe:n these people came in. (.)
>It was:< (.) John and Caroline. (1.0)
And then they had- (.)
this other fella Dave.
oWith them as well.o

[6 lines omitted]
they all came in the pub anyway. (1.0)
Well (.) Connie sat beside (0.6) Caroline.
And I sat (further back).
So you was (.) you was split between us.
They sat in- on the other side.
(1.0)
[16 lines omitted]
And uh:: (1.0)
1→ Connie had a short skirt on
2→ I don’t know. (1.0)
And I knew this- (0.6)
uh ah- maybe I had met him. (1.0) Ye:h. (.)
I musta met Da:ve before. (0.8)
But I’d heard he was a bit of a la:d ( ).
He didn’t care: (1.0) who he (0.2) chatted up or (.)
who was in Ireland (.) y’know
those were (unavailable) to chat up with.
(1.0)
So Connie stood up (0.8)
pulled her skirt right up her side (0.6)
and she was looking straight at Da:ve (.)
>olike thato< (0.6)
(DE:C2:S1:10–11)

11-Silverman 3e 4074-CH-11 (Part V).indd 199 16/08/2010 2:08:13 PM

 200 Talk · Jonathan Potter

Let us start by considering Jimmy’s description of Connie’s skirt length (arrow 1).
For Jimmy this description does some important business related to why they are
here for counselling, and who has the problems that need fixing. The short skirt
exemplifies something about Connie’s character. It is a building block in the con-
struction of Connie as ‘flirty’, making this an objective particular rather than just
Jimmy’s opinion. He is merely reporting something that she chose to wear rather
than engaging in psychological judgement. However, the description is an especially
delicate one, which means that Jimmy’s stake in it is likely to be something to be scru-
tinised. The problem for Jimmy is that the description could be turned round and used
as evidence that he is precisely the sort of pathologically jealous guy who obsessively
remembers every detail of his partner’s skirt length. That is, his description might gen-
erate problems for him as much as for Connie. How can he manage this delicacy?
It is immediately after the description of the skirt length that Jimmy says ‘I don’t
know’ (arrow 2). Why might he be saying just this just here? Let us consider the pos-
sibility that it attempts to head off the potential counter that Jimmy was jealously
inspecting Connie’s clothing, that he was already concerned about it even before
the evening was under way? This interpretation is consistent with the detail of the
sequence. Jimmy provides a description of Connie’s skirt length that is part of his
picture of her flirtatious behaviour, which, in turn, makes his own strong reaction
more accountable. At the same time the expression of uncertainty works against the
idea that he is saying this, noticing this, because he is pathologically jealous.
Why not treat the ‘I don’t know’ as Jimmy straightforwardly reporting his uncer-
tainty about this feature of the narrative? This would be in line with the cognitive
psychological account of such utterances as ‘uncertainty markers’. Can we adjudi-
cate between these different interpretations of ‘I don’t know’? There are various ways
we might go about this. One approach that discourse analysts have found particu-
larly fruitful has been to look for variability between different versions. Variability is
to be expected where people are constructing their talk in different ways to perform
different actions – variability in and between versions can be an important clue to
understanding what action is being done. In this case, for example, we can search the
materials for other references to Connie’s skirt length. We do not have to look very
hard! The very first thing Connie says after Jimmy’s long narrative is the following.

Extract 5
Connie: My skirt probably went up to about there. ((gestures))
Jimmy: ((gives a sharp intake of breath))
Connie: Maybe a bit shorter. It was done for no- I never looked at that particular
bloke when I did it it was my friend commented
Oh you’re showing o:ff a lot o’ leg tonight.
(DE:C2:S1:11)

11-Silverman 3e 4074-CH-11 (Part V).indd 200 16/08/2010 2:08:13 PM

 Discursive Psychology and the Study of Naturally Occurring Talk 201

Two things are particularly worth highlighting here. First, note that despite
various dramatic events in Jimmy’s long narrative of which this is just a fragment
(including a suicide attempt) the very first thing that Connie picks out to contest is
the description of her skirt length. In doing this she is displaying a skilled awareness
of the relationship of descriptions to moral categories. This is a display that we can
use to help support our own understanding of the working of this description.
Second, note that here Jimmy does not seem to be in any doubt about the precise
length of Connie’s skirt. His sharp, highly audible, inbreath is a display of disagree-
ment with Connie’s claim about her skirt length that occasions a grudging modi-
fication by Connie. The point, then, is that there is no evidence of Jimmy’s cloudy
memory – there is no ‘I dunnoness’ here; precision in skirt length now seems to be
the order of the day. This variability supports the tentative discursive psychological
interpretation of this ‘I dunno’ as a stake inoculation and it does not fit with the plain
vanilla cognitive account in which the speaker merely reports their lack of certainty.
Let us return now to Martin Bashir’s interview with Princess Diana Spencer. We are
now in a better position to make some systematic suggestions about the ‘I dunno’s’
in this passage of talk. We can start to make sense of their role in the management
of stake and interest, and in particular their operation as stake inoculations.
The first thing we need to be confident of is that there is an orientation to issues
of stake in this material. It is not hard to find. Bashir opens the sequence by formu-
lating the relation between Andrew Morton’s book and a hard year for the Queen
(her well-known annus horribilis). Bashir then pursues a line of questioning to the
Princess about her involvement with this book. He attempts to tease out for the
viewing audience how responsible she is for this (negatively constructed) book.
Princess Diana responds to these questions with a series of denials, evasions,
accounts and implicit versions of the role of the book (in that order in response to
the first three questions). However, having accepted that she had some involvement
with the book, if only via her friends, she is now faced with a tricky question about
how the book make a positive contribution (how would a book change that?). This
question is so tricky because of its potential for suggesting that Princess Diana has
acted as a spurned and victive ex-wife, getting her revenge for a book that Prince
Charles was involved with (mentioned soon after this extract). Given this issue of
stake, we can make sense of the placement of the two ‘I dunno’s’. The uncertainty
displayed in the answer to ‘how would a book change all of that?’ precisely man-
ages the danger she will be seen as calculating and malevolent, a woman who has
carefully planned her revenge. The ‘I dunno’s’ help break the connection between
her action of helping with the book and the potentially noxious identity implied in
this action. Note the coordination of verbal and non-verbal here. Her first ‘I dunno’
is accompanied by what might be called a display of wondering – she looks into the
distance as if never having been asked this before or had to think about it before. It
is a lovely exhibition of psychological matters being attended to by both vocal and
non-vocal actions.

11-Silverman 3e 4074-CH-11 (Part V).indd 201 16/08/2010 2:08:14 PM

 202 Talk · Jonathan Potter

This is by no means a definitive account of the role of ‘I dunno’ in Extract 1. And,

of course, it does not address the very many other live and relevant features of the
extract. However, what I have tried to do is show some of the procedures that can
help build an interpretation of a piece of discourse, and the mentality that goes with
such analysis. Let me list some of these features

Themes in the Analysis of Discourse

This chapter has attempted to overview some of the issues that arise when analysing
discourse. Developing analytic skills is best characterised as developing a particular
mentality. Discursive psychology is more inductive than hypothetico-deductive;
generally work starts with a setting or particular discursive phenomenon rather
than a preformulated hypothesis. The focus is on texts and talk as social practices
in their own right. Part of the procedure of discursive psychology may involve the
coding of a set of materials, but this is an analytic preliminary used to build a corpus
of manageable size rather than a procedure that performs the analysis itself. There
is nothing sacred about such codings and extracts are often freely excluded and
included in the course of a programme of research.
Discursive psychology follows the conversation analytic assumption that any
order of detail in talk and text is potentially consequential for interaction, and for
that reason high-quality transcripts are used in conjunction with audio or video
recordings. In addition, discursive psychology research generally avoids trading on
analysts’ prior assumptions about what might be called ethnographic particulars
(e.g. participants’ status, the nature of the context, the goals of the participants),
preferring to see these as things that are worked up, attended to and made relevant
in interaction rather than being external determinants.
Discursive psychology does not use talk and texts as a pathway to underlying
cognitions; indeed, discursive psychology resolutely steers clear of cognitive reduc-
tion, instead treating purportedly cognitive phenomena as parts of social practices.
It has focused, for example, on the way participants invoke stake and interest to
understand and undercut accounts, and how such undercutting may be resisted by
performing actions via accounts that are constructed as factual.
In this chapter I attempted to illustrate these themes by way of a discussion of
‘I dunno’ and ‘I don’t know’. I have considered only a small number of examples.
However, I hope that the insights are more general (Wooffitt, 2005, takes the analy-
sis further). Let me end with an extract from the US sitcom Friends. Even with my
minimal, cleaned up transcription I think we can start to see the way the humour in
the sequence depends on the sorts of features of ‘I don’t know’ discussed above, and
in particular the way each ‘I don’t know’ manages the delivery of a piece of subtle
psychological insight that generates trouble for the recipients. The sequence starts
with Ross talking to a psychologist, Rodge, about his ex-wife.

11-Silverman 3e 4074-CH-11 (Part V).indd 202 16/08/2010 2:08:14 PM

 Discursive Psychology and the Study of Naturally Occurring Talk 203

Extract 6
Ross: You see that’s where you’re wrong! Why would
I marry her if I thought on any level that
she was a lesbian?
Rodge: I don’t know. ((shrugs)) Maybe you wanted your ←
marriage to fail. ((laughs))
Ross: Why, why, why would I, why, why, why.
Rodge: I don’t know. Maybe... Maybe low self esteem, ←
maybe to compensate for overshadowing a sibling.
Maybe you w-
Monica: W- w- wait. Go back to that sibling thing.
Rodge: I don’t know. ((shrugs)) It’s conceivable that ←
you wanted to sabotage your marriage so the
sibling would feel less like a failure in the eyes of
the parents.
Ross: Tchow! That’s, that’s ridiculous. I don’t feel
guilty for her failures.
(The One with the Boobies, 27 June 1996 – Ross is Monica’s brother,
Rodge is a psychologist boyfriend of Ross and Monica’s friend.
Note, each ‘I don’t know’ is heavily emphasised)

Summary

This chapter overviewed discursive psychology. It described basic theoretical and

methodological themes and distinguished discursive psychology from conversation
analysis. The analytic approach of discursive psychology was introduced by way of
an exploration of the role of ‘I dunno’ in different kinds of materials. This was inter-
preted in terms of participants managing their stake in particular delicate actions
that they are performing.

Future Prospects

In the past decade discursive psychological work has increasingly focused on building
programmes of work on large collections of talk taken from different institutional
settings (helplines, neighbour mediation). It has moved beyond making theoretically

11-Silverman 3e 4074-CH-11 (Part V).indd 203 16/08/2010 2:08:14 PM

 204 Talk · Jonathan Potter

targeted demonstrations of points to building full-scale studies that accumulate into

programmes of work.
At the same time there has been an increasingly close engagement with conversa-
tion analysis such that at times the two perspectives overlap or merge. The enormous
analytic rigour and system of conversation analysis has been an important influ-
ence on the development of discursive psychological work. It is likely that this close
engagement will continue bearing analytic fruit as well as interesting debates.
In the past few years discursive psychologists have started to focus on video
recordings of face-to-face interaction in family settings, with a particular focus on
the coordination of action and how traditionally developmental issues (what can
young children do?) become live for the participants. It is likely that work of this
kind will continue with a focus on applied questions, for example relating to issues
of health.

Questions

· Go through the differences between discursive psychology and conversation

analysis. Try to decide which differences are most consequential for their
different analytic practices (if any).
· Identify three questions that discursive psychologists might ask and one
that they would not ask.
· Go through the Friends extract from the end of the chapter and carefully
examine each ‘I dunno’ and consider the way it draws attention to the
kinds of stake inoculation that such constructions can perform.

Recommended Reading
Edwards, D. (1997). Discourse and Cognition. London and Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
Highlights the interplay of discursive psychology, ethnomethodology and conversation
analysis with a range of analyses of psychological matters. A major work that rewards
close study.
Potter, J. & Hepburn, A. (2008). Discursive constructionism. In J.A. Holstein & J.F.
Gubrium (Eds). Handbook of Constructionist Research (pp. 275–293). New York: Guildford.
This shows how recent analytic work has combined discursive psychology and
conversation analysis with the topic of constructionism.
Wiggins, S. & Potter, J. (2008). Discursive psychology. In C. Willig & W. Hollway (Eds).
The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research in Psychology (pp. 72–89). London; Sage.
(Continued)

11-Silverman 3e 4074-CH-11 (Part V).indd 204 16/08/2010 2:08:14 PM

 Discursive Psychology and the Study of Naturally Occurring Talk 205

(Continued)
An overview of the different stages in discursive psychological research.
Wooffitt, R. (2005). Conversation Analysis and Discourse Analysis: A Comparative and Critical
Introduction. London: Sage.
An excellent critical overview of these two traditions of work.

Internet Links
The Loughborough Discourse and Rhetoric Group website includes an up-to-date
bibliography, information about methods, and examples of transcription alongside sound
and video files. Many articles can be downloaded directly.
www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/ss/centres/darg/dargindex.htm
The Ethno/CA News site maintained by Paul ten Have contains a wealth of information
about interaction research – up and coming meetings, and extensive bibliographies,
including one specifically focused on discursive psychology.
www2.fmg.uva.nl/emca/

References

Antaki, C., Billig, M., Edwards, D. & Potter, J. (2003). Discourse analysis means doing
analysis: A critique of six analytic shortcomings, Discourse Analysis Online, 1:
www–staff.lboro.ac.uk/~ssca1/DAOLpaper.pdf
Billig, M. (1991). Ideologies and Beliefs. London: Sage.
Billig, M. (1996). Arguing and Thinking: A Rhetorical Approach to Social Psychology, 2nd
edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Button, G. & Sharrock, W. (1993). A disagreement over agreement and consensus in
constructionist sociology. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 23 (1), 1–25.
Clarke, V., Kitzinger, C. & Potter, J. (2004). ‘Kids are just cruel anyway’: Lesbian and
gay parents’ talk about homophobic bullying. British Journal of Social Psychology,
43, 531–550.
Clayman, S.E. & Heritage, J. (2002). The News Interview: Journalists and Public Figures
on the Air. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Drew, P. (2005). Is confusion a state of mind? In H. te Molder & J. Potter (Eds).
Conversation and Cognition (pp. 161–183). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Drew, P. & Heritage, J.C. (Eds) (1992). Talk at Work: Interaction in Institutional Settings.
Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press.

11-Silverman 3e 4074-CH-11 (Part V).indd 205 16/08/2010 2:08:14 PM

 206 Talk · Jonathan Potter

Edwards, D. (1994). Script formulations: A study of event descriptions in conversation.

Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 13 (3), 211–247.
Edwards, D. (1995a). Sacks and psychology. Theory and Psychology, 5, 579–596.
Edwards, D. (1995b). Two to tango: Script formulations, dispositions, and rhetorical
symmetry in relationship troubles talk. Research on Language and Social Interaction,
28, 319–350.
Edwards, D. (1997). Discourse and Cognition. London and Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
Edwards, D. (2003). Analysing racial discourse: The discursive psychology of mind-
world relationships. In H. van den Berg, M. Wetherell & H. Houtkoop-Steenstra
(Eds). Analysing Race Talk: Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Interview (pp. 31–48).
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Edwards, D. (2008). Intentionality and mens rea in police interrogations: The production
of actions as crimes. Intercultural Pragmatics, 5, 177–199.
Edwards, D. & Potter, J. (1992). Discursive Psychology. London: Sage.
Edwards, D. & Potter, J. (2005). Discursive psychology, mental states and descrip-
tions. In H. te Molder & J. Potter (Eds). Conversation and cognition (pp. 241–259).
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Edwards, D., Ashmore, M. and Potter, J. (1995). Death and furniture: The rhetoric,
politics and theology of bottom line arguments against relativism. History of the
Human Sciences, 8, 25–49.
Gergen, K.J. (2009). An Invitation to Social Construction, 2nd edn. London: Sage.
Gilbert, G.N. & Mulkay, M. (1984). Opening Pandora’s box: A Sociological Analysis of
Scientists’ Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Harris, R. (1981). The Language Myth. London: Duckworth.
Hepburn, A. & Potter, J. (2003). Discourse analytic practice. In C. Seale, D. Silverman,
J. Gubrium & G. Gobo (Eds). Qualitative Research Practice (pp. 180–196). London;
Sage.
Heritage, J.C. (1988). Explanations as accounts: A conversation analytic perspective.
In C. Antaki (Ed.). Analysing Everyday Explanation: A Casebook of Methods. London:
Sage.
Hutchby, I. and Wooffitt, R. (2008). Conversation Analysis, 2nd edn. Cambridge:
Polity Press.
Levinson, S.C. (1983). Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Phillips, L.J. & Jørgensen, M.W. (2002). Discourse Analysis as Theory and Method.
London; Sage.
Potter, J. (1992). Constructing realism: Seven moves (plus or minus a couple). Theory
& Psychology, 2, 167–173.
Potter, J. (1996). Representing Reality: Discourse, Rhetoric and Social Construction.
London: Sage.
Potter, J. (2003a). Discursive psychology: Between method and paradigm. Discourse
& Society, 14, 783–794.
Potter, J. (2003b). Discourse analysis and discursive psychology. In P.M. Camic,
J.E. Rhodes & L. Yardley (Eds). Qualitative Research in Psychology: Expanding Perspectives
in Methodology and Design (pp. 73–94). Washington, DC: American Psychological
Association.

11-Silverman 3e 4074-CH-11 (Part V).indd 206 16/08/2010 2:08:14 PM

 Discursive Psychology and the Study of Naturally Occurring Talk 207

Potter, J. (2006). Cognition and conversation. Discourse Studies, 8, 131–140.

Potter, J. & Edwards, D. (2001). Discursive social psychology. In W.P. Robinson &
H. Giles (Eds). The New Handbook of Language and Social Psychology (pp. 103–118).
London: John Wiley & Sons.
Potter, J. & Hepburn, A. (2003). I’m a bit concerned: Early actions and psychological
constructions in a child protection helpline. Research on Language and Social Interaction,
36, 197–240.
Potter, J. & Hepburn, A. (2005). Qualitative interviews in Psychology: Problems and
possibilities. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 2, 281–307.
Potter, J. & Hepburn, A. (2008). Discursive constructionism. In J.A. Holstein &
J.F. Gubrium (Eds). Handbook of Constructionist Research (pp. 275–293). New York:
Guildford.
Potter, J. and Wetherell, M. (1987). Discourse and Social Psychology: Beyond Attitudes
and Behaviour. London: Sage.
Sacks, H. (1992). Lectures on Conversation, Vols I & II, ed. G. Jefferson. Oxford: Basil
Blackwell.
Schegloff, E.A. (1993). Reflections on quantification in the study of conversation.
Research on Language and Social Interaction, 26, 99–128.
Schegloff, E.A. & Sacks, H. (1973). Opening up closings. Semiotica, 7, 289–327.
Silverman, D. (2007). A Very Short, Fairly Interesting and Reasonably Cheap Book about
Qualitative Research. London: Sage.
Stokoe, E.H. (2003). Mothers, single women and sluts: Gender, morality and
membership categorisation in neighbour disputes. Feminism and Psychology, 13(3),
317–344.
Te Molder, H. & Potter, J. (Eds) (2005). Conversation and Cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Wetherell, M. & Potter, J. (1992). Mapping the Language of Racism: Discourse and the
Legitimation of Exploitation. London: Harvester, New York: Columbia University
Press.
Wetherell, M., Stiven, H. & Potter, J. (1987). Unequal egalitarianism: A preliminary
study of discourses concerning gender and employment opportunities. British
Journal of Social Psychology, 26, 59–71.
Wetherell, M. Taylor, S. & Yates, S. (Eds) (2001a). Discourse Theory and Practice: A
Reader. London; Sage.
Wetherell, M. Taylor, S. & Yates, S. (Eds) (2001b). Discourse as Data: A Guide for
Analysis. London; Sage.
Widdicombe, S. & Wooffitt, R. (1995). The Language of Youth Subcultures: Social Identity
in Action. London: Harvester/Wheatsheaf.
Wiggins, S. & Potter, J. (2008). Discursive psychology. In C. Willig & W. Hollway
(Eds). The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research in Psychology (pp. 72–89). London;
Sage.
Wood, L.A. & Kroger, R.O. (2000). Doing Discourse Analysis: Methods for Studying Action
in Talk and Text. London: Sage.
Wooffitt, R. (2005). Conversation Analysis and Discourse Analysis: A Comparative and
Critical Introduction. London: Sage.

11-Silverman
View publication 3e
stats4074-CH-11 (Part V).indd 207 16/08/2010 2:08:14 PM