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British Journal of Social Psychology (2010), 49, 685690 q 2010 The British Psychological Society

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Commentary

Imagine: Towards an integrated and applied social psychology

Jackie Abell* and Chris Walton
Lancaster University, UK
This commentary does not aim to engage with the epistemological and ontological technicalities of the discursive psychology maintained by epistemological constructionism and discursive psychology reliant on ontological constructionism approaches that form the basis of the two papers under discussion; other commentators, both in this issue and in the future, are likely to do that. Instead, this commentary aims to situate both papers within a broader frame of contemporary, primarily British social psychology, to ponder the circumstances that gave rise to them and their implications for social psychologists, discursive and non-discursive, alike. We have organized this commentary into two parts. The rst part considers two simple questions. First, why does Corcoran critique DPEC for failing to do things that other discursive approaches provide for? And, second, why does Corcoran take DPEC research to task for having too little potential for or made too little contribution to improving the lives and subjectivities of people in general? These two questions are not unrelated, but for claritys sake we will try to answer them separately. The second part of this commentary will consider the inuence of discursive psychology on social psychology more generally.

DPEC and discursive psychology

On a purely theoretically level, there remains within what Corcoran glosses as the DPEC position fertile ground for discussions of epistemology, ontology and the potential for that approach to engage with the subjectivities of people in the real world. But to suggest that DPEC needs to be theoretically refurbished such that it can become DPOC seems to ascribe to DPEC a status that is unwarranted. Such a project would be reasonable if DPEC, as an approach to doing social psychology or as an analytic method, were, metaphorically speaking, the only or biggest kid on the discursive psychological block. But it is not. A simple survey of the empirical qualitative research published in
* Correspondence should be addressed to Dr Jackie Abell, Department of Psychology, Lancaster University, Bailrigg, Lancaster L A1 4YF, UK (e-mail: jackie.abell@lancaster.ac.uk).
DOI:10.1348/014466610X535540

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this journal over the past 10 years reveals a variety of discursive approaches to social psychology. Excluding research that explicitly identies as having adopted analytic methods such as content analysis, thematic analysis, grounded theory or interpretative phenomenological analysis, or any other method that may be glossed (for the present purposes) as a non-discursive approach, there remain 68 articles all of which may reasonably be glossed as adopting a discursive approach to social psychology. This grouping is admittedly highly inclusive, running from sequential conversation analysis (CA), through membership categorization analysis (MCA), discursive psychology (aka DPEC), and discourse analysis (DA), all the way to feminist post-structuralist DA, and along the way the researchers adopt a wide range of epistemological and ontological positions.1 Quite simply, and on the basis of this evidence, discursive approaches to social psychology are a very broad church and the members of its congregation demonstrate in their empirical investigations dazzling inventiveness in their combination of approaches, methods, epistemological, and ontological positions. Further such a state of affairs is entirely consistent with the view that what matters is empirical utility rather than methodological purity; a view which can now be found clearly expressed in the pluralistic approach (Frost, 2009; Haslam & Parkinson, 2005). All of which again begs the question, why focus on DPEC? It is evident from his response that this question occurred to Potter (2010). His account of the emergence of discursive psychology seems oriented to just this concern. As his history admits, the DPEC position is just one of a number of discursive approaches to social psychology. Is it therefore that DPEC is the predominant discursive approach to doing social psychology? Again a survey of this journal would suggest not. Of the 68 articles, 14 categorized as discursive explicitly claim to adopt a discursive psychological approach in the manner of Edwards and Potter (1992). Of the articles, 12 claim to be doing sequential CA or MCA and though many of the remainder state that their approach is informed by discursive psychology their analyses extend into areas beyond the scope of the so-called DPEC position. On the face of it then, and setting aside any merits of Corcorans theoretical critique of DPEC, there seems to be little empirical need for it.

Applying DPEC
However, such a view would elide the practical motivation underlying Corcorans theoretical critique, to congure a discursive social psychology that can chart the means to create, in a proactive sense, a language of potentials, enablement and respect that serve as alternatives to the more historically dominant languages of constraint, disablement, and disrespect (Corcoran, 2009, p. 379). Irrespective of any concerns, we might have about the kind of language of potentials that a community of social psychologists may create, it would seem that Corcorans dissatisfaction with DPEC lies with its perceived failure and/or limited potential to make meaningful contributions to the ways that most people, from which we infer most nondiscursive psychologists, think, speak, and feel about their selves. In the simplest possible terms, DPEC stands accused of lacking the theoretical basis to make

1 These groupings are based on the methods that the authors describe adopting and in many cases they do not explicitly state adopting a specic approach. The extent to which the authors of all those articles maintain the epistemological and ontological position of the method stated is, of course, debatable, and beyond the scope of this simple commentary.

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meaningful and engaging contributions to psychologys commitment to promoting human welfare (Miller, 1969). This we can separate into two basic concerns; has DPEC been insufciently applied? Arguably yes. A brief analysis of Potters publications reveals that their primary focus has been on the continued development and extension of discursive psychology as an alternative to traditional cognitive social psychology and as an analytic method. We shall comment on the sustainability of these critiques of social cognition later in this paper. The latter focus has increasingly become associated with a concern to access phenomena that would have occurred without the presence or involvement of the researcher. Though the merits of privileging this type of data have and will continue to be debated (see Potter, 2002; Speer, 2002) it has led DPEC researchers, if we can for a moment imagine that such things exist, to go where the naturalistic data are. One perhaps unintended consequence of the desire to access this type of data and the development of technologies and techniques that support its collection, is that it has brought DPEC researchers together with practitioners and service providers with the explicit shared aim of examining how things get done in practice (Hepburn & Wiggins, 2007; Stokoe, in press). Consequently, it is only recently that researchers who may be identied as adopting the DPEC position have really begun to have meaningful engagement with outside agencies to which they have fed back the ndings of their research and, on the basis of that feedback, have informed changes to institutional practices. This has the potential to affect, if they have not already actually done so, material change in the experiences and lives the people who use and in some cases rely on those services. That these projects can have this effect and that they have done so without compromising on their epistemological positions is testament to intelligence of the staff in those institutions rather than the intransigence of the researchers. Quite simply, lay audiences are demonstrably capable of understanding how basic grammar can congure the experiences of the people they aim to support (Antaki, Finlay, & Walton, 2009) without those researchers relying on recourse to mentalistic concepts; we are, on the basis of our practical experience, in agreement with Potter that it is patronizing to suggest that lay audience are unable to engage with the language of discursive psychology. In fact, it can be liberating for them to see what had previously been regarded as an intractable epistemic problem, how do we know that what he says he wants is what he really wants, reduced to an effect of repeated questions and preferred and dispreferred responses. Secondly, is this applied discursive research sufciently visible? Unarguably it is not. And here the issues that Corcoran identies about the capacity of DPEC to make meaningful contributions to improving the lot of a broader humanity become germane to all, and particularly all British, contemporary social psychologists who recently have been, will soon again and for the foreseeable future be required to demonstrate the impact of the research they conduct.

DPEC and mainstream social psychology

So far we have questioned Corcorans specic focus on DPEC as a somewhat limited, straw man representation of discursive psychology. Defending his patch of limited turf, Potter offers a justication for the beginnings of DA within social psychology. This is a well-rehearsed argument claiming a lack of attention to language within social psychology and the adoption of a realist stance on the psychological workings of the

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individual. In his response to Corcoran, Potter writes, critiques have focused on the way that the objects of individual psychology have been produced as unitary, inner, and mental, by means of various methodological restrictions, and how these combine with a broader telementation picture that has language as a conduit for conveying ideas from one mind to another cognitivist arguments involves showing that talk has been treated as a diagnostic of some mental object that can better (more coherently, parsimoniously) be seen as an element in a situated practice ( pp. 67). These kinds of claims have been contested within social psychology on the grounds of a straw man characterization of the discipline in general and social cognition in particular. The history of social psychology is a chronicle of interdisciplinary theoretical inuences and mixed methods. Whilst there has been the development of new qualitative techniques within social psychology (such as DA, CA, and MCA), and the emergence of a qualitative methods section (QMiP) in the BPS, qualitative methods per se are not new within the discipline. Moreover, the importance of language has been recognized in classic social psychological research. For example, Brannigan (2004) observes that Milgrams study was more about the verbal explanations that blamed the experimenter, than it was about a willingness to hurt others, concluding that [t]he psychologist who discovers such relationships empirically is basically only discovering how language works in the construction of reality (p. 32). Furthermore, Jost and Kruglanski (2002) amongst others (e.g., Smyth, 2001, 2004) have warned about the dangers of producing exaggerated differences between subgroupings on the basis of method and the philosophy of constructionism noting, [e]xperimentalists hold a less pragmatic view of truth that is less extreme and more reexive than what is often ascribed to them by social constructionists (p. 174). Yet, these differences have formed the narrative of camps within social psychology and had real consequences in terms of access to journals and research funding (Manstead & Wetherell, 2005). In short, whilst cognitive work was prioritized in social psychology, discursive work became marginalized. In his defence of DPEC, Potter dismisses social cognitions use of qualitative methods as a variant of content analysis that transforms it into themes and variables, losing the contingency and action-orientated nature of ongoing interaction in live settings (p. 13). Unfortunately, by focusing on methodological differences, Potter further ring fences DPEC and obscures a common project amongst social psychologists; that of exploring and understanding the social contingency and situatedness of human action. In social neuroscience, for example, researchers recognize the interrelationship between cognition and culture (e.g., see the work on prejudice by Ibanez, Haye, Gonzalez, Hurtado, & Henriquez, 2009). Language is not simply a conduit for conveying ideas from one mind to another but is shaped by cultural norms and values, which in turn shapes how we relate to one another. Fiske and Taylor (2008) note that, As social cognition research outgrows its original Western (North American and European) boundaries and simultaneously reaches into the brain, it extends its cultural reach as well (p. 21). In their study of in-group denition and intergroup relations, Livingstone, Spears, and Manstead (2009) use thematic textual analysis to examine how these are produced, contested, and defended in language. They note, rather than being unproblematic givens, in-group goals, interests, membership, and its very essence are actively contested by group members (p. 297). The work of Reicher and Hopkins (1996, 2001) has focused on how political identities are constructed, contested, and defended in interaction. Yet these are not DPEC researchers.

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It is surprising then that discursive psychologists do not acknowledge this work, or even stake a claim to having made important inroads. Mainstream social psychology is engaging with language as a construction yard (Potter, 1996); as a site where social psychological life is produced and played out. Some might argue it always did. In short, discursive psychology has entered the mainstream. Why not recognize the achievements and impact discursive psychology (including DPEC) has had upon the discipline of social psychology? Why focus on a small patch of turf and not the entire eld? In his request for mutual respect between the groupings within social psychology, Reicher (2005) notes the reluctance of academics to engage with, or even read, the work of groups other than their own. If they did, the rhetoric of camps may start to look shaky. Or, perhaps there is more investment in keeping old divisions alive than in working towards the kind of organic pluralism Haslam and Parkinson (2005) suggest. Jahoda (2007) observes, there is a lack of consensus about what social psychology is or ought to be (p. 2). This will remain the case so long as we look inwards at our own camp and speculate about what the neighbours might be doing on the other side of the fence.

Conclusion We must therefore be grateful to both Corcoran and Potter for bringing to the fore these concerns about methodolatry, straw person accounts of other approaches, and the increasing need for social psychology to have a demonstrable broader impact. It is incumbent upon all social psychologists to move towards dialogue and interaction, to recognize advances and commonalities, and to develop methods and approaches that can meet the various aims of contemporary social psychological research. Moreover, if social psychology is to continue to develop, to be seen as a thriving discipline and if it is to be socially valued, we must also, as researchers, authors, reviewers, and editors, work towards making the impact and applied contributions of our discipline more visible, not only within the academic literature but also to the wider population.

References
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