Week 12 Study Guide

DE300 Investigating psychology 3

Week 12 Study Guide

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Week 12 Study Guide

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Contents
 1. Introduction
 Week 12 study tasks

 Week 12 learning outcomes

 2. Why focus on discourse?

 Identities and otherness

 Realism and relativism

 3. Methods and skills

 Existing documents as data

 What is discourse analysis?

 When do we use it?

 How do we use it?

 How do we write it up?

 4. Independent project

 References

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1. Introduction

View description - Uncaptioned figure

Welcome to Week 12. This week you will explore a question that
has been of interest to many psychologists throughout the history
of psychology – ‘who am I?’. You will learn about how the topic of
identity is understood using theoretical and methodological ideas
from discursive psychological approaches. This will involve an
examination of the insights discursive approaches provide on how
everyday talk or discourse constructs a sense of self and identity.
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In the Methods and skills section, you will be extending your

knowledge of discursive methodological approaches. You will
explore how existing data samples can be discursively analysed
and undertake a discourse analysis of a newspaper article.

Alison Davies

View description - Alison Davies

You should begin this week’s study by listening to the audio by

Alison Davies, who is one of the authors of Chapter 9 of your
module textbook, ‘Why focus on discourse? Discursive psychology
and identity’. In the audio, Alison discusses critical discursive
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psychology (CDP), which is a framework that considers how

culturally available understandings provide the context for meaning
making in local interactions. Alison discusses some general
reflections on how the topic of identity is understood from a CDP
approach.

Audio content is not available in this format.

Welcome to Week 12

View transcript - Welcome to Week 12

Week 12 study tasks

Below, you will find a list of the study tasks for this week. These
include calculations of how long it should take you to complete
each task, which should help you when planning your study. You
should set aside 12 hours for the core study tasks. You have 16
hours of study time this week, so the remaining time should be
used for your independent project.

 Read Chapter 9, ‘Why focus on discourse? Discursive

psychology and identity’. (5 hours)
 Complete an activity on exploring identity in discourse.
(45 minutes)

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 Listen to an audio dramatisation on ‘death and

furniture’ and complete the associated activity on
relativism. (1 hour)

Methods and skills

 Watch a video in which David Kaposi discusses
research using existing data. (1 hour)
 Listen to an audio that explores the practical
considerations of designing a discursive study. (30
minutes)
 Watch a video in which David Kaposi discusses how to
discursively analyse data using interpretative
repertoires and subject positions. (30 minutes)
 Complete a discursive analysis of data. (1 hour)

Independent project
If you are carrying out a discursive study using existing data, there
will be opportunities for you to extend your knowledge of the
practicalities of sampling existing data. (1 hour 15 minutes)

Week 12 learning outcomes

After you have completed this week’s study you should be able to:

 review the aims, principles and epistemology of

discourse analysis
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 explore the key tools for a discursive analysis,

including the relevance of subject positions and
interpretative repertoires
 outline the process of collecting and using pre-existing
discursive data
 identify the ways ADHD is socially constructed through
talk or discourse.

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2. Why focus on discourse?

Now read Book 1, Chapter 9, ‘Why focus on discourse?
Discursive psychology and identity’ by Alison Davies and Mary
Horton-Salway.

Chapter 9 explores the turn to discourse in psychology as a

theoretical and methodological approach to understanding the
social world. Using examples from identity research – particularly
constructions of self in parents’ talk of their children with attention
deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) – it explores the contributions
the discursive approach has made to understanding psychological
phenomena.

When you have finished reading the chapter, return to this study
guide to work through the rest of this week's tasks and activities.

Identities and otherness

In Chapter 9 you encountered two related concepts: the
psychological concept of identity and the discursive analytic
concept of subject positions. You saw that how we become
positioned in discourse plays a role in how we come to understand
ourselves.

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A concept that you may find useful when thinking about identity is
the concept of otherness. Otherness has been used in social
psychological research to explain how we form social identities
(e.g. gender identity, football supporter, occupational identities)
and how our claim to a specific social identity (for example, an
Arsenal football team supporter) means that we identify with a
specific group of people (other Arsenal supporters) and not others
(for example, Chelsea supporters) who we understand as different
from ‘us’. This may sound familiar because you have studied
explanations of ingroups and outgroups in your DE200 studies on
prejudice and group behaviour. You may remember that, in
psychology, some explanations of prejudice towards outgroups
have been criticised as individualistic. This criticism has led some
psychologists to move away from individual-level explanations and
think about how social practices and social understandings might
produce ingroup/outgroup identifications. The concept of othering
has been useful to some psychologists to develop a more ‘social’
understanding of this.

So what is otherness? It is based on the idea that our social

identities – our sense of who we are – are produced in relation to
what we are not. To understand what is meant by this, let’s look at
the example of gender identity. The characteristics we tend to
associate with men or women are often socially represented as a
series of dichotomies. Women, for example, are often represented
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as being in touch with emotions. Men, in contrast, have often been

represented as unemotional (e.g. crying has traditionally been
constructed as something that men don’t do). This located the
gendered characteristic of emotional/unemotional in a
dichotomous relationship. So what does this actually mean for men
and women? Well, if what we are is defined in terms of what we
are not, then the process of taking on a specific gendered identity
means rejecting characteristics associated with the ‘opposite sex’.
You have probably come across many instances of this – boys
rejecting the colour pink as a ‘girl’s’ colour, the idea that ‘real’ men
don’t cry, and so on. The process of othering is embedded within
these dichotomies.

Key to understanding dichotomies is that one side of the

dichotomy tends to be privileged over the other side – often treated
socially as somehow ‘better’ than the other. For example, in many
contexts, being ‘emotional’ has a number of negative connotations.
The side of the dichotomy that is not privileged becomes the
subordinated ‘other’. Dichotomies that exist, such as man/woman,
white/‘raced’, disabled/able-bodied and so on, run the risk of
becoming positioned in this relationship of privileged/subordinated.
The process of othering has been used in social psychological
research to explain prejudice and discrimination.

Exploring the concept of othering

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In Activity 1 you will explore the concept of othering by analysing

two brief examples that construct an ‘other’. The examples are
from the data that David Kaposi mentions in this week’s video,
‘The British broadsheets’ representation of the “first Gaza war”’,
which you will be watching later in this week’s Methods and
skills section. The examples are concerned with highly
controversial issues. However, what we are concerned with here is
not the merits of the arguments put forward, but the construction of
the subject position of the ‘other’.

Activity 1: Exploring identity in discourse

Allow about 45 minutes

Let’s look at the first example – an opinion piece, published in The

Observer:

‘Israel is not an ordinary country: it is built by children of Holocaust

survivors, forcing themselves on Arab land over Palestinian dead
bodies.

Saying the above is not anti-Semitic. I received emails and phone

calls from extreme Zionists, and public attacks from fanatics such
as Melanie Phillips, for daring to question Israeli actions. Many
urged me to calm Muslim anger, but why should I? If this does not
make me and other Muslims angry, then what could?’

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(Husain, 2009)

1. Having stated his opinion on the establishment of the State of

Israel, the author then assesses his opinion as being ‘not anti-
Semitic’. However, if the opinion is not anti-Semitic, then why the
need to even state this? After all, it’s not anti-Irish or anti-Walt
Disney either, yet a claim to the contrary is not felt by the author as
being in need of negation.

Provide your answer...

View discussion - Untitled part

2. Who do you think the ‘other’ is on the article’s horizon? Is their

opinion worth listening to? Do they have a point?

Provide your answer...

View discussion - Untitled part

3. If the author thinks that his opinion is not anti-Semitic yet other
people think it is anti-Semitic, why might that be?

Provide your answer...

View discussion - Untitled part

Let’s now look at a different extract, a comment article from The

Times.

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To make sense of a conflict in which both sides claim to be victims

requires more than an emotional response to gory pictures. I
support the Palestinian right to self-determination. But I am
disturbed by the rise of anti-Israeli sentiments in Britain and the
West, as when my old friends on the Left declared: ‘We are all
Hezbollah now.’

(Hume, 2008, p. 21)

This is clearly a different political argument from the opinion piece

in The Observer. Remember, however, that our focus is on how
the subject position of the ‘other’ is constructed.

4. So who do you think is the ‘other’ in this extract? Who is the

author in dispute with?

Provide your answer...

View discussion - Untitled part

To summarise, there are of course significant political differences

between the two extracts above: one appears to be critical of
Israel, while the other appears to be disturbed by certain criticisms
made against Israel. However, from the psychological point of view
of subject positions and the construction of the ‘other’, there are
striking similarities between the two extracts. Both constructed the
‘other’ as someone unreasonable, irrational and extreme; this way,
the ‘other’ came to occupy a subject position that is impossible to
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educate or persuade in dialogue (i.e. a position that is impossible

to engage with). Regardless of where we stand politically in the
highly charged Palestinian–Israeli dispute, this is bad news for
psychologists.

Realism and relativism

In this week’s chapter, and in Chapter 7, you have learned about
realism and relativism. You might recall that realism underpins
much contemporary experimental and survey work in psychology
as well as some qualitative approaches. It refers to the idea that
we can discover some truth about the things in the world because
they have a real existence that is independent of us and our
perspectives of them. This idea is probably the one you are more
familiar with because it is part of common-sense understandings of
the world.

Much discursive research is underpinned by the idea of

relativism, which suggests that the social world (and everything in
it, such as people, places, issues and events) is not independent
from human meaning making, perspectives and understandings.
Take a moment to think of a social issue (for example, ADHD),
then think about all the different ways this issue can be debated or
talked about (e.g. ADHD as an illness or as ‘naughty’ behaviour).
These different ways of talking about an issue produces ADHD as

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something specific (e.g. a biological illness or an excuse for

‘naughtiness’ ).

There are multiple ways of understanding our social world and

because of this there is no way to get at one single truth. A
researcher adopting a relativist perspective would explore multiple
truths or multiple ways of understanding the issue under study to
see, for example, how different understandings construct the issue
and what implications these different understandings may have for
the people affected.

Realism and relativism do not necessarily stand in a dichotomous

relationship with each other. Indeed, some perspectives draw on
ideas from both to make sense of the social world (for example,
critical realism). However, the discursive analytic approaches you
are learning about in this block of the course draw on relativist
rather than realist ideas.

To help you get to grips with realism and relativism, listen to the
follow audio dramatisation written by Dr Kevin Buchanan and Dr
Ian Hodges. This play is based on the classic paper ‘Death and
furniture’ by Edwards et al. (1995) that you read about in Chapter
7.

Audio content is not available in this format.

Death and furniture: realism versus relativism

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View transcript - Death and furniture: realism versus

relativism

Activity 2: Understanding ‘Death and furniture’

Allow about 1 hour (including listening to the audio)

Now that you have listened to the play, consider the following
question:

If there is no absolute ‘truth’ then what can we

learn from psychological research?

Think about possible answers to the question that defend the use
of relativist ideas to understand social psychological phenomena.

Provide your answer...

View discussion - Activity 2: Understanding ‘Death and

furniture’

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3. Methods and skills

Last week you looked at individual interviewing as the first of three
data collection methods that you can choose from if you are
carrying out a text-based study for your independent project. You
saw that individual interviewing is often an appropriate choice of
method for phenomenological studies because it allows the
researcher to access in-depth discussion of the interviewee’s
experience. This does not mean to say that you can only use
individual interviews as data if you are using a phenomenological
approach. This method is also used widely in discursive studies to
research, for example, the construction of experiences,
understandings or perspectives.

This week, however, you will focusing on the collection of existing

documents, which is the second choice of data collection method
that you have available to you for your independent project.
Existing documents are exactly that – documents that are already
in existence such as newspaper or magazine articles, for example.
You will learn about different kinds of existing documents and how
to sample them for a research project. Studies that use existing
documents often work with research questions that lend
themselves to discourse analysis. For this reason, you will build on
your knowledge of the discursive approach by learning about and
applying the discourse analytic concepts of interpretative
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repertories and subject positions to a newspaper article about

ADHD.

Existing documents as data

View description - Uncaptioned figure

Existing documents include a wide range of potential data sources

such as legal documents, policy documents, political manifestos,
books, websites, newspapers and magazine articles. The term
basically covers any textual document that existed prior to a
research study.

Why use existing documents as data? Well, there are a number of

good reasons why a psychologist might choose to use existing
documents and those reasons are always grounded in the

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research questions asked. For example, newspaper coverage of a

particular event or contemporary issue can provide insight into the
popular ways those topics are understood in the current
social/cultural context. This might help answer research questions
focused on how a topic or an issue is understood or how certain
groups or people are typically represented or constructed.

This section will focus primarily on collecting one form of existing

document: newspaper or magazine articles. You can find such
articles using the search engine Nexis, which allows you to search
across a variety of broadsheets and magazines. At the beginning
of your research, it is sometimes helpful to do a general search on
the topic of interest to see what sort of material has been written
about it. This may also help you develop some criteria for how you
are going to sample from the pool of articles on the subject.

How to sample existing documents

Given the potentially massive number of existing newspaper
articles that might relate to your research question, you will need to
think about how you will choose which ones you will analyse in
your research.

One criterion for sampling might be to sample all articles

about the topic within a specific time frame. For
example, if there were a change of legislation relating to your topic,

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you may just want to sample articles about it during the first two
months following the change in the law. Similarly, if you were
interested in a specific event – such as the reporting of the 2011
riots in England – it may make sense to sample coverage from
when the riots started until reporting of it started to dissipate.

Another criterion might be to sample articles from a

particular source or sources. You may be interested in how
the topic is constructed in a newspaper that is informed by
particular politics (e.g. the Guardian newspaper is politically
centre-left). Other valid reasons may lead you to sample from
certain sources only; for example, your research topic may require
you to sample only material that is exclusively directed either at a
male or a female audience.

The key thing to remember is that you need to collect enough data
to ensure that you can conduct a meaningful analysis. Newspaper
articles vary in length and detail of content. For this reason you
should consult your tutor for advice about your sample size to
make sure you have sufficient data for analysis.

Should you decide that existing data would be a suitable choice for
your independent project, you can learn more about the
practicalities of how to search using Nexis in this week’s
independent study options.

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Activity 3 is designed to help you engage with some of the issues

that may arise when using existing data in a research project. In
the following video, David Kaposi discusses the use of existing
data in his research. First watch the video (which is about 11
minutes long) without any interruption.

Video content is not available in this format.

David Kaposi’s use of existing data in his research about the Gaza conflict

View transcript - David Kaposi’s use of existing data in his

research about the Gaza conflict

Activity 3: Using existing data

Allow about 1 hour

Now watch the video again and jot down your answers to the
following four questions.

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1. How can we make sense of the issue of generalisability when

using existing data?

Provide your answer...

View discussion - Untitled part

2. What ethical issues might arise when working with existing data
such as newspaper articles?

Provide your answer...

View discussion - Untitled part

3. How does the use of existing data help to make research

transparent?

Provide your answer...

View discussion - Untitled part

4. In what ways does the process of formulating a research

question when working with existing data differ from how we
typically formulate research questions in other forms of
psychological research?

Provide your answer...

View discussion - Untitled part

What is discourse analysis?

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Discourse analysis refers to a family of analytics that share a focus

on discourse as a form of social action. Strands of discourse
analysis typically share a concern with how events, people and
social objects are constructed through discourse (i.e. What version
of events is being constructed?), as well as the function that
particular discourses serve (e.g. What exactly is this version
doing? Does it make some people look better than others? Why is
that?). There is also an attention to variability in discourse – how
something is talked or written about will vary depending on the
interactional goal that is being served and/or the context in which
discourses are being used.

In this section, you will be learning about a strand of discourse

analysis that uses the following concepts to explore patterns in
data:

 Interpretative repertories. These can be

thought of as recognisable, recurrently used patterns
of talking or writing about a particular issue, topic or
phenomenon. A number of interpretative repertories
may be culturally available to talk about the same
issue or phenomenon and they may contradict each
other.
 Subject positions. Interpretative repertories (and
discourses generally) produce identity positions that

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speakers can take up (or become assigned to) during

conversations or accounts of particular issues or
phenomena.
 Ideological dilemmas. An ideological dilemma refers
to being stuck between two unfavourable choices. A
discourse analyst is interested in how these dilemmas
become constructed and what rhetorical work goes
into discursively managing and negotiating dilemmas.

For the rest of this Methods and skills section, you will be focusing
on interpretative repertories and subject positions. Next week you
will explore the notion of ‘trouble’ which, as you will see,
resonates with the concept of ideological dilemma. ‘Trouble’ is the
analytic concept you are advised to use in your independent
project, should you be using discourse analysis to explore patterns
in your data.

You might wish to reread the relevant sections of Chapter 9 to

make sure you are familiar with the concepts of interpretative
repertories and subject positions before you continue with the
activities that follow.

When do we use it?

In Week 11, you learned how to design and use interviews as a
method of data collection. You have also read about the

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considerations for designing an interview study to collect data for

discursive research and analysis.

In the following audio, which explores the practical considerations

of designing a discursive study, Alison Davies discusses the
background to her interview study on parents’ constructions of
ADHD.

View description - Uncaptioned figure

Audio content is not available in this format.

Lisa Lazard (left) talks to Alison Davies (right) about her study on parents’
constructions of ADHD

View transcript - Lisa Lazard (left) talks to Alison Davies

(right) about her study on parents’ constructions ...

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How do we use it?

The following tutorial with David Kaposi will show you how you can
develop a discursive analysis of data that uses the concepts of
interpretative repertoires and subject positions. In the tutorial, Dr
Kaposi treats a newspaper article that discusses the issue of
ADHD as data.

You will find it helpful to read the Times newspaper article

before you watch the tutorial.

Once you have watched the tutorial, you will have an opportunity
to practise applying interpretative repertoires and subject positions
in an activity that will use a second newspaper article on ADHD as
data.

Video content is not available in this format.

David Kaposi discusses discourse analytic concepts: interpretative repertoires

and subject positions

View transcript - David Kaposi discusses discourse analytic

concepts: interpretative repertoires and ...

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Practising discourse analysis

Activity 4 addresses the basic issues you will encounter when
carrying out analysis from the perspective of critical discursive
psychology. In it, you will discursively analyse an article adapted
from the Guardian newspaper.

Activity 4: Analysing discourse

Allow about 1 hour

Read the Guardian article and listen to the audio recording of it,
below. Take some time to familiarise yourself with the content, so
that you feel confident about how the article talks about and sets
out the main issues.

The truth about athletes with ADHD

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Michael Phelps, hailed as the greatest Olympian ever, has ADHD. Can his,
and others’, success be used to help inspire younger people?

View description - Michael Phelps, hailed as the greatest

Olympian ever, has ADHD. Can his, and others’, ...

One has acquired more Olympic medals than any other athlete in
history; the other was knocked out of the 2012 Olympic Games
after just 250 seconds. But Michael Phelps and Ashley McKenzie,
who was the 23-year-old British No. 1 judoka, have one thing in
common: both have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD),
as does another high-profile Olympian, British gymnast Louis
Smith, who helped win the first British men’s gymnastics team
medal for a century.

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Suddenly, a condition that is hugely stigmatised and still

controversial, is unexpectedly in the spotlight. It raises several
interesting questions: Does ADHD hinder or help sporting
success? And can the Olympics offer a positive legacy for people
suffering from it?

Phelps, the American swimmer with a record-breaking 19 Olympic

medals to his name, is probably the most famous person in the
world with ADHD, the top behavioural disorder in Britain, which is
estimated to affect 2–5 per cent of children and young people. For
Phelps, a gangly, hyperactive child, who was diagnosed with the
condition aged 9, the swimming pool was a sanctuary, a place to
burn off excess energy. His mother, Debbie, once recalled being
told by a teacher: ‘Your son will never be able to focus on
anything.’ It’s interesting that the boy who was unable to
concentrate at school would sit for four hours at swimming meets
waiting to compete in five minutes of races.

Louis Smith has spoken of how gymnastics was an outlet for his
tremendous energy, and taught him discipline and manners. But
Ashley McKenzie's story is perhaps most dramatic of all. Expelled
from three schools and placed in a psychiatric unit aged 11
because his mother was unable to cope, McKenzie also served
time in a young offenders' institute. He credits judo with saving him
from prison, and, in a BBC documentary, called it a ‘mad booster’

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to his life, giving him ‘a pavement instead of walking on the road’. ‘I

don't want to be looked at as, “He's got ADHD and he's the bad
person.” I've changed now,’ he said.

But it’s not as simple as sport rescuing him. McKenzie served

three bans from judo for drinking and fighting, and, on the last
night of the Team GB training camp before the Olympics, he went
out to celebrate his 23rd birthday and told a stranger at a bar: ‘I’m
gonna smash your face in.’ His ADHD may bequeath him energy
but his sporting career is actually a hindrance to tackling his
condition: he cannot take the medication he needs to treat his
ADHD because it contains substances banned by the sporting
authorities – hence his struggle to control his behaviour.

More athletes will almost certainly be undiagnosed or keeping it

quiet, such as Adam Kreek, a Canadian rower who won gold in
Beijing, and two years later began talking openly about his
condition. ‘I found that the disorder isn’t a negative infliction, but it
gives positive energy as well,’ Kreek, who is now a motivational
speaker, said in 2010. Diagnosed aged 6, he believes anyone with
ADHD can train their mind to channel their ‘incredible’ energy. As
well as a good diet and family support, he found ‘rowing to be an
outlet to control my ADHD’.

ADHD can be a confusing condition because people may be

fidgety and unable to focus, and, yet, as Phelps so spectacularly
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proved, are capable of concentrating intently on an activity they

find rewarding. Children with the disorder, says Andrea Bilbow,
founder and chief executive of ADDISS, a charity and support
service for ADHD, are often brilliant at computer games.
Psychiatrists say that this ‘hyperfocusing’ is a relatively common
feature in individuals with ADHD.

Athletes like Phelps and McKenzie do not, however, have special

powers via their condition. Bilbow believes it’s actually significantly
harder for people with ADHD to become elite athletes. ‘Having
ADHD doesn’t mean you’re going to be a great sportsperson,’ she
says. ‘Your ADHD isn’t going to get you there, it’s hard work that
will. ADHD is not a contributor towards success but equally it is not
a barrier to success.’

People with ADHD, which is a developmental disorder, may find

they have poor problem-solving skills, and struggle with
timekeeping, and organising and motivating themselves, explains
Bilbow. This may suggest that adapting to the discipline demanded
by athletic training is tough for those with ADHD and, yet, Bilbow
believes many with the condition find sport gives them the kind of
immediate rewards and sense of achievement they need to build
confidence and resilience.

After his early exit in the judo, McKenzie has vowed to come back
stronger in Rio in 2016. Bilbow hopes McKenzie can get the extra
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help he’ll need in the coming years. She works with parents with
children with ADHD and believes more could find sport a
constructive way of managing the condition, rather than being
preoccupied with academic success. Her two sons, Max and Joe,
both have ADHD: Max, who is 29, finds an outlet for his energy in
elite kayaking, while Joe, who is 25, was an Olympic volunteer.
Her advice to parents? ‘Find your child’s island of competence and
invest in it heavily.’

Bilbow has noticed that children with ADHD may have their
sporting opportunities curtailed as punishment for their behaviour,
as McKenzie found. Bilbow knows of a brilliant young footballer
with ADHD who was barred from representing his school because
of his conduct in lessons.

Many teachers and schools, she believes, still scoff at the disorder,
believing there are only naughty children – and bad parents. The
concept of role models can seem an overused cliché, but the
Olympians with ADHD may really inspire a generation of athletes
who once would have been written off. ‘Parents can be saying to
kids who are having a miserable time in school, “Look, Michael
Phelps had ADHD and he worked really hard. Ashley McKenzie’s
been in a young offenders’ institute, but he didn't give up,”’ says
Bilbo. ‘That's the message we've got to give kids.’

(Adapted from Barkham, 2012)

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Audio content is not available in this format.

What can athletes with ADHD teach us about the condition?

Now read through the following questions, which will guide the
analysis.

1. What is said?

This question helps to identify the patterns and discourse

resources (or building blocks) that have been used to construct
accounts.

It is often helpful to start the analytical process by thinking about

what impressions the article left you with. Was it expected? Was it
surprising? Answering ‘yes’ to either of these questions can be
interesting as you may then want to find out why you thought the
data was predictable or surprising, because it either repeats
patterns that you have seen elsewhere or contradicts them. (For
example, how do patterns in the newspaper article here compare
with what you read about ADHD in this week’s chapter?) In this
way, your first impressions will help inform your analysis. During
the analysis you may try to find evidence to substantiate these
impressionistic ‘hunches’. As you will see, it is sometimes the case
that, as the analysis progresses, you will be compelled to give up
these preliminary judgements.

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Provide your answer...

View discussion - Untitled part

2. How are these patterns/discursive resources

used?

This question examines the function and variability of the

discursive resources.

Variability seems to be at the heart of the data. In the article,

ADHD is sometimes constructed as ‘positive’ and beneficial for the
individual but sometimes as ‘negative’ or even destructive. How is
this possible? Is the article contradicting itself? You can look into
these issues by examining the function various (and sometimes
contradictory) discursive resources have.

In Chapter 9, you saw that constructions of ADHD inherently

involve issues concerning identity and moral responsibility. Having
a child diagnosed with ADHD automatically implies that the parent
is also ‘diagnosed’, prompting the question, ‘Am I a good parent, or
am I a bad parent?’.

Likewise, you can examine the Guardian data to see what identity
positions are implied by the various patterns/discursive resources
used to make sense of ADHD.

Provide your answer...

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View discussion - Untitled part

3. What is being taken for granted? How is it

related to cultural context? What constructions are
dominant and how are they related to power
issues?

This analysis started by choosing something that not only stood

out of the data but looked surprising and interesting. Often,
however, it is what is unsaid, taken for granted, negligible and,
frankly, boring that helps to analyse the data.

Provide your answer...

View discussion - Untitled part

The juxtaposition of the two discursive resources – ‘ADHD as

positive/extra energy’ and ‘ADHD as negative/lack of focus’ – may
appear problematic as it cannot be evidenced from the data at all
points. As this energy is depicted in many situations as actually
constituting a problem for those with ADHD, it is far from being
positive. On the other hand, we read that those with ADHD ‘are
capable of concentrating intently on an activity they find rewarding’
and that ‘psychiatrists say that this “hyperfocusing” is a relatively
common feature in individuals with ADHD’.

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To what could this further proliferation of variability be attributed?

As discussed above, it is possible to detect other, taken-for-
granted, discursive resources in the data. One of them is ‘ADHD
as misunderstood’, which is evidenced by the newspaper article
saying that ADHD is ‘stigmatised’ and that ‘Many teachers and
schools, she believes, still scoff at the disorder, believing there are
only naughty children – and bad parents.’ This is important
because this unintrusive, yet constant, discourse actually makes
our dilemmas go away. Instead of ADHD being seen as either a
positive or a negative condition, it is seen as a social problem –
that is, what matters is not so much what ADHD is, but how it is
understood in the current cultural context. If, instead of being
stigmatised, the condition is channelled towards certain vistas (e.g.
sports in the case of Michael Phelps), it can provide an
opportunity, as well as a hindrance.

In this sense, then, the function of the apparent discursive

resources analysed above is to infuse society with a moral identity
and a role in managing ADHD. The upshot of the article therefore
appears to be that the power to influence human lives with ADHD
lies not simply with biology or parentage, but (perhaps first and
foremost) with the society.

How do we write it up?

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Before you approach the write-up of a discursive analysis, it is a

good idea to return to Week 9 and familiarise yourself with the
generic template and instructions for writing up qualitative
reports. It is in the analysis and discussion sections that the
writing up of a discursive analysis project differs from other
qualitative approaches, so this week’s material will concentrate on
these sections.

You will draw once again on David Kaposi’s study of the British
newspapers’ representation of the war in Gaza (between the
Israeli Defense Forces and the Palestinian Hamas), in which he
analysed a number of interpretative repertoires and subject
positions. In what follows, you will look at how to write a critical
discursive analysis on some extracts of this analysis, concentrating
first on interpretative repertoires and second on subject positions.

Before starting, it is important to reflect on perhaps the most

important distinguishing factor in how a critical discursive analysis
is written up. Over and above the required match between the
interpretative repertoire and the extract (i.e. the latter has to be a
good illustration of the former), it is very important to go into the
textual details of the extract. It is through this that you show the
meaning, significance and psychological importance of the
interpretative repertoire (or subject position) in question.

Writing up interpretative repertoires

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One interpretative repertoire characterising the British newspapers’

coverage of the war was ‘The right to launch the war’. Let’s read
how Kaposi’s write-up of this proceeds. Below, extracts from his
write-up are interpersed with a commentary explaining how this
write-up was achieved:

The interpretative repertoire of ‘The right to

launch the war’
‘War carries with itself a number of political, moral and legal
dilemmas that ultimately decide the meaning and interpretation of
the war. The foremost question pertains to whether war was a right
choice to answer a situation, whether its launching can be justified.
What were the human choices that brought war into being? […]’

As above, first you should introduce the interpretative repertoire.

What are the thoughts or dilemmas that one would have in mind
when considering this interpretative repertoire?

In the conservative Daily Telegraph’s account of the armed

conflict, a clear cause of war was detectable, suggesting a direct
link between certain actions and the fact that war eventually had
broken out.

This is followed by a more specific introduction of the extract that

will illustrate the interpretative repertoire.

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Extract 1

“The first reaction of most commentators was that the air attacks
on Gaza were unnecessarily savage. The deaths of nearly 300
Palestinians, including civilians, seems disproportionate to the
small number of Israelis killed by rocket attacks. Hamas was not
expecting retribution on this scale, but we can be sure that it will
extract the maximum possible propaganda advantage from the
slaughter. Israel’s enemies in the liberal West are already pinning
the blame squarely on ‘Zionists’. So are most Muslims.

But, before we jump to conclusions, we should pay close attention

to the response of Mahmoud Abbas, chairman of the Palestinian
National Authority. He blamed Hamas for triggering the Israeli
raids by not extending its truce. His Fatah party is engaged in a
vicious feud with Hamas, so this is perhaps what one would expect
him to say. But he is right, none the less. Hamas did engineer this
crisis, by firing rockets whose range has been increased so they
can reach southern Israeli cities.” (Daily Telegraph, 7)

First and foremost, you need to find an extract that illustrates your
interpretative repertoire appropriately. Make sure your quote is not
too short – it is difficult to further analyse short extracts. Besides,
qualitative research in general and discourse analysis in particular
are very sensitive to the importance of context. A quotation of

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appropriate length is one that renders enough of the context to

make a fuller sense of the extract.

As can be seen, in the conservative narrative of the war it was the

Hamas rockets that constituted the cause of war. Indeed, in the
Telegraph, rockets are constructed as the events without which
the war would simply have not taken place: not just acts that
reasonably justify the launching of the war but acts which,
causally, ‘trigger[ed]’ the war (Extract 1). The sequence between
rockets and war is a straightforward stimulus-response relation.
Indeed, in this account Israel did not even make the right choice
but had in effect no choice at all but to launch the offensive. As
such, its conduct is not so much politically or morally justified, but
simply beyond political-moral deliberation.

While finding the right extract from your data is essential to the
writing up of a critical discourse analysis, the best part of the job is
the actual analytical commentary you provide on the extract.

As you see, the analysis will draw on textual detail (i.e. phrases)
from the extract. Engagement with such detail is very important for
a critical discourse analysis.

Inasmuch as the rockets are accountable for the war or, indeed,
‘triggered’ it, our task is then to learn more about them. What are

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they? Where do they come from? What damage do they cause?

And why are they fired in the first place?

The description of rockets advances in a number of rather

interesting ways. On the one hand, we learn of some general
qualities of the rockets, Extract 1 stating that their “range has
increased”. The implication is that whatever rockets and in
whatever number had in the past been fired, these rockets now
represent a growing immediate danger. The rocket fire was
similarly occasioned in later editorials, pointing out their general
prevalence (“8,000 rockets have been fired at their territory in
recent years” (Daily Telegraph, 17]).

The main purpose of the analytical commentary you provide

following each extract illustrating the interpretative repertoire is to
give an account of the interpretative repertoire itself: what is the
interpretative repertoire’s meaning? What are its implications?
What is the repertoire’s psychological significance? Why is it
important?

On the other hand, we may wonder what these rockets achieve

and what the specific damage is that they cause. Curiously, this
issue is, by and large, neglected in the conservative publications.
They are somehow of no interest. Indeed, as the Telegraph’s first
paragraph on the war states, only a “small number of Israelis
[were] killed by rocket attacks”. At face value, this state of affairs is
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most counter-intuitive. If rockets ‘triggered’ the war nearly

automatically, one would expect them to have caused
considerable damage. This, in the conservative account, has not
happened. But this does not appear to be problematic for the
conservative account either. How can this be so?

Variability can be important here, too. Just like in quantitative

research, where a variable can have a number of values, an
interpretative repertoire can host many qualities. In the example
here, the specific manifestation of ‘The right to launch the war’ was
a perspective where Israel’s launching of the war was justified.
Elsewhere, however, this right of Israel’s (to justifiably launch war)
was denied. A good analysis would therefore include such various
instances of the interpretative repertoire, and ponder the reason
for the existence of different versions.

Writing up subject positions

As you have seen throughout this study week, interpretative
repertoires and subject positions are often intimately related to
each other in that nterpretative repertoires often imply certain
subject positions. In fact, the analytic argument on the previous
page ran that, to understand the interpretative repertoire of ‘The
right to launch war’, we have to analyse the subject position of
Hamas, as constructed in the Daily Telegraph.

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Let’s see how this is accomplished:

The subject position of Hamas

It is Hamas and only Hamas whose characteristics explain, in the
conservative press, why the rockets are fired at Israel, and what
the motivation is behind these acts that trigger the war. It will
therefore be the conservative construction of Hamas that will shed
light on the seemingly puzzling feature of why even a ‘small
number’ of deaths justifiably and inevitably cause war.

Accordingly, it is the characteristics of Hamas that conservative

papers need to address to account both for rockets and for a war,
apparently, arising out of necessity. In line with this, the
Telegraph devotes ample space to the question. And, given that
the factor of virtually sole direct responsibility for the outbreak of
the war is Hamas, such attributes are painted in unexpected
colours.

Just as with the interpretative repertoire, you start the section on

your subject position with some introductory remarks. You will find
that the subject position is often intimately related to interpretative
repertoires, and so this introduction can directly link it to an
interpretative repertoire. Here, the Daily Telegraph’s
interpretative repertoire of ‘The right to launch the war’ was

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intimately linked to the question: ‘Who or what is the Palestinian

movement Hamas?’

Extract 2

“Only one group of people can have derived any satisfaction from
the footage of blood-covered children being pulled from the rubble
in Gaza: the fanatics of Hamas. This terrorist organisation has
been firing rockets into Israel ever since the breakdown of the
ceasefire, in the hope of provoking a furious Israeli response. And
that is precisely what materialised.” (Daily Telegraph, 7)

Again, finding an appropriate and fitting quotation is essential.

Though the explicit term used to describe Hamas in the extract

above is ‘fanatics’, the picture arising arguably is one of perverts,
relishing in the destruction of their own people. The force behind
the rockets thus aims not even, simply, to cause harm to Israel or
Israeli citizens. Hamas is not simply a terrorist organization, but
one that is downright suicidal to the very Palestinian lives and
interests they claim to represent.

Once you have found a suitable quotation, your analytical

comments need to go into the nitty-gritty of textual details.

Other descriptions of Hamas in the initial account of the

Telegraph offer a similarly dark picture. We learn that Hamas “is

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not a reasonable political movement. It cannot thrive without crisis;

the blood of innocents is its own lifeblood. These are not
Palestinian nationalists who happen to be Muslims; they are
totalitarian Islamists whose Palestinian identity is of secondary
importance. They have nothing but contempt for Arab Muslim
states” (Daily Telegraph, 7); that it is determined “to wipe out Israel
– and, eventually, every secular Arab state” (Daily Telegraph, 7);
that its leaders are “anti-Semitic” (Daily Telegraph, 17) and its
members “religious fanatics” (Daily Telegraph, 7) who hate not
only the Israeli state but “Jews” as such (Daily Telegraph, 7).

The detailed analysis of the extract can also be supported by

shorter quotes elsewhere from your data. Remember, however,
that short quotations in themselves won’t do! Providing the context
is very important for discursive analysis.

Discussion of power relations

Either as a standalone section or as part of the general discussion,
a critical discourse analysis needs to reflect on the wider power
relations in society that may have an impact on the data. What are
these power relations? And how might they have a bearing on the
data? These comments tend to be of a more theoretical nature, as
they usually move away from the immediate nuances of the data.
For example:

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Power relations
As the newspapers attended to the issue of possible Israeli war
crimes, the interpretative repertoire of ‘The right to launch war’ was
exclusively manifested in the question of pure destructive intention:
that is, whether those who happened to have killed civilians willed
to kill civilians. This was paralleled by the assessment of Hamas
rockets. They were either reduced to the pure intention they
embodied or to the (relatively speaking) little material consequence
they caused. No other conceptualization of the rockets than this
radical schism between intention and effect featured in any of the
newspapers […]

The section starts with the recapitulation of the main findings.

Why was this the case? As documented by intellectual historian

Samuel Moyn, the language developed to counter and prevent
excesses of past utopias that found human lives dispensable in
pursuit of the ultimate goal has itself become humanity’s (or, at any
rate, the Western half of it) last utopia (Moyn, 2011). Indeed,
notions such as ‘war crimes’ or ‘crimes against humanity’ were
uttered (or resolutely not uttered) in the broadsheets precisely with
some kind of quasi-religious fervour. Yet if we try to answer the
question of why exactly it occurs when issues of Israel/Palestine
are discussed, another scene may be mentioned. Namely, the
images of absolute separation between Good versus Evil, and
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Innocence versus Destruction may derive from Western

civilization’s last epic and essentially uncontroversial war. It may
be that it is the image of an event of metaphysical proportions in
the imagination that motivates the discourse over Israel/Palestine:
that, of course, of the Second World War. And, in the disguise of
humanitarian law, it is the framework of ‘Us versus the Nazis’ that
is enacted in the place of common and consensual political, moral
or legal standards across the broadsheets.

Here, the findings of the textual analysis are related to two aspects
of wider social power relations: first, the way human rights are
talked about in our society; and second, the way the Second World
War is talked about in our society.

Similarly, in your analysis you need to think about how wider

societal relations of power might exert an impact on the particular
forms you interpretative repertoires or subject positions take.

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4. Independent project
Activity 5: Using Nexis UK
Allow about 1 hour 15 minutes

If you are planning a discursive project that uses existing data, you
should work through this activity developed by the OU Library,
which explains how to use Nexis UK to access digital
newspaper articles.

If you are planning a discursive study for your independent project

you will find the following articles useful in demonstrating how to
conduct and write up discursive research:

 Paulson, S. and Willig, C. (2008) ‘Older women

and everyday talk about the ageing body’,
Journal of Health Psychology, vol. 13, no. 1, pp.
106–20.
 Wetherell, M. and Edley, N. (2014) ‘A discursive
psychological framework for analyzing men and
masculinities’, Psychology of Men &
Masculinity, vol. 15, no. 4, pp. 355–64.
 Verkuyten, M. and De Wolf, A. (2002) ‘Being
feeling and doing: discourses, self-definitions

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among minority group members’, Culture and

Psychology, vol. 8, no. 4, pp. 371–99.

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References
Barkham, P. (2012) ‘What can athletes with ADHD teach us about
the condition?’, The Guardian, 1 August [Online]. Available at
www.theguardian.com/society/2012/aug/01/athletes-with-adhd
(Accessed 12 November 2015).

Dalrymple, T. (2014) ‘ADHD Does Not Exist by Richard Saul’, The

Times, 22 March, p. 14.

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,
vol. 8, pp. 25–49.

Hume, M. (2008) ‘Gaza is more than a simplistic morality play’,

The Times, 29 December, p. 21.

Husain, E. (2009) ‘How can this happen before our eyes?’,

Observer, 11 January, p.29. .

Potter, J. and Wetherell, M. (1987) Discourse and Social

Psychology: Beyond Attitudes and Behaviour, London, Sage.

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Activity 1: Exploring identity in

discourse
Untitled part
Discussion
The likely reason why the author feels he has to state this is
because he believes there are other people who would consider
his opinion to be anti-Semitic. This would then necessitate the
author having to explicitly disclaim such a position.

Back to Session 2 Part 1

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Activity 1: Exploring identity in

discourse
Untitled part
Discussion
What we learn about them is that they are ‘extreme Zionists’ and
‘fanatics’. In other words, they are people whose contributions
(whatever they may be) are not characterised by their use of
common sense: they are irrational, as evidenced by their
judgement being based on the author’s mere ‘daring to question
Israeli actions’. Thus, opposing the author, the subject position of
the ‘other’ is embodied by extremists and fanatics, and is
completely devoid of reason: the mere questioning of Israeli action
is equated with anti-Semitism.

Back to Session 2 Part 2

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Activity 1: Exploring identity in

discourse
Untitled part
Discussion
Theoretically, of course, there might be a number of reasons for
this. It might be, for instance that the ‘other’ (who thinks that the
opinion is anti-Semitic) is simply not very intelligent: in need of
education. It also might be that, for whatever reason, the other has
‘lost their mind’: their feelings blur their clear sight. It is also
possible that they are blinded by a particular political ideology. Or,
quite simply, it is also possible that they are malicious: they know
that the opinion is really not anti-Semitic; but for some other
purpose, they still say that it is.

Now, empirically speaking, it looks as if in this particular case the

‘other’ thinks that the opinion is anti-Semitic (when in fact it is not)
because they are irrational. The article mentions them to be
‘fanatics’ and ‘extreme Zionists’. That is, it looks like they are
irrational because they are wedded to a particular extreme political
ideology.

Back to Session 2 Part 3

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Activity 1: Exploring identity in

discourse
Untitled part
Discussion
The answer to this question seems pretty clear. The ‘other’ is
those ‘in Britain and the West’ harbouring ‘anti-Israeli sentiments’.
They therefore are not just critiquing Israel’s actions, or trying to
convince Israelis to opt for alternative action to launching war, but
are ‘anti-Israeli’. What is more, the actual statement attributed to
them is ‘We are all Hezbollah now’, thus identifying them not just
with a group opposing Israeli policies, but one that actually aimed
its rockets at Israeli civilians in the 2006 Lebanon War between the
Israeli Defense Forces and Hezbollah. Thus, the ‘other’ here, too,
is assigned a rather extreme and, arguably, immoral identity.

Back to Session 2 Part 4

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Activity 2: Understanding ‘Death

and furniture’
Discussion
Hopefully you will have found thinking about this question helpful
for deepening your understanding of realism and relativism and for
thinking through how you can use relativism to say something
meaningful about the psychological phenomena you are
researching.

To answer this question, you may have mentioned that the study
of different versions tells us something about how a psychological
phenomenon is understood in the current cultural context. If you
understand the versions of an issue, then you are in a position to
analyse the implications that certain versions have for the people
they impact. For example, consider your reading on parenting
identities for those with children who experience ADHD. You saw
that a dominant discourse on ADHD constructs the children as
naughty, which is located as a poor parenting issue. What
implications might this have for parents? It’s possible they may
internalise such comments to doubt their own abilities and see
themselves as a poor parent. Acknowledging that this is an
implication can help with the development of practical strategies

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that parents might find helpful to resist being positioned in this

negative way.

Back to Session 2 Activity 2

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Activity 3: Using existing data

Untitled part
Discussion
Existing data sources such as newspaper articles have a large
readership and so the discourses that are drawn on in the articles
are familiar to a diversity of people. We can therefore make an
empirical, as well as a theoretical, generalisation of the discourses
researchers identify in texts.

Back to Session 3 Part 1

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Activity 3: Using existing data

Untitled part
Discussion
The availability of so many different topics in newspapers means
that researchers can venture into areas that they might not realise
will be upsetting to them. In this type of research, considerations of
safety and well-being still apply to the researcher, even though
there are no participants present.

Back to Session 3 Part 2

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Activity 3: Using existing data

Untitled part
Discussion
Data sources such as newspapers are publicly available, which
means that other researchers have easy access to the full data set
should they wish to check the transparency or plausibility of
analytical claims made about the data.

Back to Session 3 Part 3

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Activity 3: Using existing data

Untitled part
Discussion
The research question has to be formulated with the data in mind –
rather than before considering the data – because you will only be
able to ask questions based on the existing material. If you try to
set a research question too firmly before considering the existing
data, you may find that there is very little material relating to it.

Back to Session 3 Part 4

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Activity 4: Analysing discourse

Untitled part
Discussion
In Chapter 9, Alison Davies and Mary Horton-Salway identify two
broad patterns in their data: (1) ADHD as biological and (2) ADHD
as caused by the environment/bad parenting. Interestingly, these
issues do not seem to be at the forefront of the concerns of the
Guardian data. ADHD is described as a ‘developmental disorder’
that is ‘hugely stigmatised and still controversial’, but it is not clear
what the article attributes it to. Could ADHD be due to biology, bad
parenting, or some other factor? It’s hard to tell. It’s clear that the
cause of ADHD is not at issue; the article’s main concern lies
elsewhere.

Perhaps you found yourself surprised as you were reading the

article. If so, this may be because the discursive resource used to
build this account constructs ADHD as positive. The upshot of the
article was a positive image attached to ADHD. In contradistinction
to the data analysed by Davies and Horton-Salway, to live with
ADHD was not necessarily negative.

What was the discursive resource used to construct this image of

ADHD? First of all, it was the idea that ADHD gives those
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‘suffering’ from it extra energy. In average conditions, this makes

them twitchy and fidgety; yet, when presented with the opportunity
‘to burn off excess energy’ – as the sportsmen in the article were –
they can thrive.

At the same time, there was another, somewhat contradictory,

discursive resource in the article. ADHD was elsewhere described
as ‘stigmatised’ and, in certain contexts at least, hindering focus
and concentration. Thus, a parallel thread to ‘ADHD as
positive/extra energy’ ran through the data and it could be
preliminarily labelled as ‘ADHD as negative/lack of focus’.

This discursive resource of ‘ADHD as stigmatised’ is a crucial one

that permeates the article; another is ‘ADHD as a disorder’. They
are important patterns – well done if you spotted them.

The main reason for choosing to focus in this discussion on ‘ADHD

as positive/extra energy’ and ‘ADHD as negative/lack of focus’ is
that together they form an oppositional pattern that is likely to be
surprising. It is often useful to examine what seems novel and
perhaps counter-intuitive in your data. In this case, new ways of
understanding phenomena can generate important insights and
have crucial social implications for those positioned as living with
ADHD.

Back to Session 3 Part 6

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Activity 4: Analysing discourse

Untitled part
Discussion
This is where analysis gets complicated, but also interesting! On
the one hand, the discourse of ‘ADHD as positive’ clearly functions
to normalise the condition of ADHD. The identities involved
(parents or children) should not be tainted and should not feel
ashamed.

On the other hand, this discourse may be taken to connote an

identity where ADHD is not a problem but – given the right
circumstances – a blessing! This discourse would almost prompt
us to think that Michael Phelps was somehow lucky to have
ADHD. Just think of all that excess energy to burn! It is this
possible attribution of identity that the expert, Andrea Bilbow,
seems to foreclose: ‘Having ADHD doesn’t mean you’re going to
be a great sportsperson. … Your ADHD isn't going to get you
there, it’s hard work that will. ADHD is not a contributor towards
success …’

In this way, the dilemma as to whether ADHD is a condition of

extra/excess energy or an inability to maintain focus becomes an

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issue of moral identity (just as, in Chapter 9, the dilemma as to

whether ADHD is caused by biology or bad parenting did so).

So what is ADHD, then, in the data? Good or bad? Energy or lack

of focus? What is the point of variability and critical discursive
psychology’s celebration of variability? You may find yourself
wondering about these questions.

Back to Session 3 Part 7

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Activity 4: Analysing discourse

Untitled part
Discussion
Chapter 9 noted how, for instance, ADHD is a gendered diagnosis.
Somehow it is mostly boys who are talked about, and it is
inevitably their mothers who come under the spotlight when
parental responsibility is implied. You might also have noticed that,
in the newspaper article above, it is three men whose successes
we are asked to witness. What is more, we have read of Ashley
McKenzie: ‘Expelled from three schools and placed in a psychiatric
unit aged 11 because his mother was unable to cope, McKenzie
also served time in a young offenders’ institute.’

It is arguable whether McKenzie’s mother is to blame for her son’s

difficulties. (She may have had good reasons for not being able to
cope.) What is unequivocal, though, is that she is the only person
with moral accountability: McKenzie himself is a child and his
father is simply missing. In reality McKenzie’s father may well be
missing, but from a discursive perspective what is interesting is
that he is also missing in terms of assigning accountability.
Accountability is placed squarely on McKenzie’s mother. This does
not necessarily mean that mothers are accountable, but rather it

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says something about how motherhood is understood in the

current cultural context. That is, in dominant parenting discourses,
there is a tendency to privilege mothers as having ultimate
accountability when it comes to child-rearing.

This, in turn, has repercussions with respect to power issues. The

‘female’ quality of motherhood becomes implicitly associated here
with concepts such as family and the private realm. Politically and
morally speaking, the home becomes the woman’s ‘natural place’,
while the masculine takes an equally implicit claim on the public
and the political. The article, implicitly and in a somewhat ‘hidden’
manner, contradicts the idea of gender equality.

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Uncaptioned figure
Description
This colour photograph shows a young white female with long, dark, straight hair,
wearing an elegant red dress. She is sitting on the floor looking at her reflection in a
large mirror. In the mirror image, the woman is holding a piece of paper with “who
am I?” written on it.

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Alison Davies
Description
This colour photograph shows Chapter 9 author Alison Davies. Alison is a white
female with shoulder-length red hair. She is wearing a dark top.

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Uncaptioned figure
Description
This colour photo shows a stack of newspapers. Each paper is folded. About eight of
them are visible in the photograph.

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Uncaptioned figure
Description
These two colour photographs show Lisa Lazard on the left (a white female with
shoulder-length, straight, dark hair, wearing a striped top) and Alison Davies on the
right (a white female with shoulder-length red hair, who is wearing a dark top).

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Michael Phelps, hailed as the

greatest Olympian ever, has ADHD.
Can his, and others’, success be
used to help inspire younger
people?
Description
This colour photograph shows Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps in the swimming
pool. He is celebrating a win.

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Welcome to Week 12
Transcript
ALISON DAVIES
Hi, my name’s Alison Davies, and I co-wrote Chapter 9 with Dr Mary Horton-
Salway. The main focus of our chapter is on how identity is produced through
discourse, talk and text, with most of the examples coming from two separate studies
on the discourse around ADHD, a highly complex and controversial medical
category.
Our chapter is the first of two chapters which deal with discursive psychology: a
theoretical perspective that originates in Jonathan Potter and Margaret Wetherell’s
seminal work Discourse and Social Psychology [1987]. Discursive psychology
offers an alternative position to a cognitive-social approach to social psychology. A
cognitive-social approach focuses on internal cognitive processes. As suggested by
the name, discursive psychology is interested in language, in particular the
performative use of language; that is, what language does.
Despite there being different approaches within discursive psychology, there are some
things that are common to all approaches. Rather than being understood as a neutral
tool – which can directly access, and then reflect, an individual’s attitudes, ideas and
experiences – within discursive approaches, language, or discourse, is understood to
be constitutive of meanings, identities and social reality. Discursive psychology
rejects the idea that cognition or experience can be accessed directly and transparently
via talk; instead, it is concerned with how people talk, and how, through linguistic
practices, psychological life is constituted.
Perhaps, it’s clearer to give an example. This example comes from the data collected
from the key study of Chapter 9, in which parents are asked to talk about their
experiences of ADHD. Ingrid is talking about how she has finally decided to medicate
her son after some initial reluctance. She says: ‘Now, I think I’m the other way. You
watch these programmes with people who’ll refuse to medicate and I think that’s
completely wrong, now; because, you see, that even though it’s medication, they do
need it because they are … you know, there’s not the right connection up there.’
What is Ingrid doing here? As a discursive psychologist, the focus is on the
construction of people who don’t medicate as somewhat stubborn and problematic.
Through her use of language, Ingrid distances her own position from these other
people’s and, in so doing, validates her own decision to medicate.
This chapter will introduce you to some theoretical concepts or tools, which are
helpful for understanding constructions and discourses. Specifically, you will learn
about interpretative repertoires, or culturally shared ways of talking about a topic,

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and subject positions (pre-existing identities made available through the

interpretative repertoire).
Our chapter takes a critical approach to the label ‘ADHD’. We challenge the view that
ADHD has a fixed, neutral meaning. Instead, the chapter reveals the different versions
of ADHD and shows how these different explanations can perform different moral
work. We must emphasise, however, that this does not mean we don’t accept the
‘truth’ of ADHD. Our job isn’t to assess the truth; we are not medically trained. What
matters to us is how it is understood. It’s a powerful and complex category which is
understood in very different ways. These ways do things and allow things to happen,
and that’s the focus of our interest. We hope you find the questions raised by CDP as
fascinating as we do.

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Death and furniture: realism versus

relativism
Transcript
REALIST (TIM HIBBERD)
I am a realist. I believe that reality exists independently of human social practice: in
the end, the world is the way it is, whatever people say or do. And, of course, the job
of science is to discover the truth about that reality, that real world.
RELATIVIST (POLLY KEMP)
I am a relativist. I believe there is no absolute truth, no reality existing independently
of human practices: truth and reality are socially constructed. There is no truth to be
discovered; there are many truths, each relative to the particular social and historical
circumstances in which it is produced.
REALIST
Correct me if I’m wrong, but are you seriously suggesting that there is no reality other
than that which is constructed through human practices like language?
RELATIVIST
Language and other kinds of sense-making activity: yes, I am.
REALIST
But what about this table? (knocks on table) This is real: listen to the noise, look at
how it stops my hand. Surely, talk cannot change those facts? I don’t see how you can
deny that this is a reality existing independently of words.
RELATIVIST
I agree it is hard to deny when you put it that way. You make me appear to be denying
the obvious. Let me try and explain using your own example; turn the tables on you,
so to speak. Your hitting the table is a constructive act. The table is not already
standing there as a rebuttal of my argument; it becomes one at the moment you hit it,
and for that moment that you hit it. The significance of that hitting comes from its
place in this particular disputation; on another occasion, it might signify anger,
appreciation, accidental heavy handedness.
REALIST
But this table is real.
RELATIVIST
You ask me to take so much on trust. We all assume we know what a table is; we all
assume the rest of it, apart from the bit under your fist, is solid; we all assume it
stands for the physical world in general. All this is based on common-sense
consensus, on what everyone would agree with. These things are a matter of social

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judgement; realism is based on this social judgement, on this common-sense

consensus: reality is what we agree it to be.
REALIST
So you’re denying this table is objectively real?
RELATIVIST
I’m saying that furniture doesn’t exist independently of human practices and human
categorisations.
REALIST
Alright, alright. Maybe furniture isn’t such a good example. What about rocks?
RELATIVIST
What rock in particular? Granite? Limestone? Ayers Rock? Pet rocks? A girl’s best
friend? All of them ‘rocks’; all of them subject to social categorisation processes; all
of them part of cultural scripts.
REALIST
OK, OK. Imagine you just trip over a rock, one that isn’t part of a cultural script, one
that exists independently of any categorisation.
RELATIVIST
But that’s more constructed than any of the others. You just invented it! Your
argument is pretty weak if you have to resort to that.
REALIST
OK. Forget about rocks. What about death? Are you suggesting that death is socially
constructed?
RELATIVIST
Well, yes.
REALIST
Oh, come on! Surely, you must admit that death is an undeniable reality? Are you
denying that death really happens? If you take that position, that death and suffering
are just social constructions, surely you open the way for all kinds of nasty things to
happen: anyone can do anything and say it’s OK. That’s amoral!
RELATIVIST
OK. Well, first of all, 99 per cent of people in the world are realists like you, and there
doesn’t seem to be any shortage of death and suffering in the world. In the face of
that, it seems rather silly to say that relativism would open the way for that kind of
thing to happen.
REALIST
But the relativist position you are taking has no moral strength as far as I can see. It
seems to me that it would allow anything to happen, because every viewpoint has
equal validity. How would we stop atrocities? How would we argue against them?
RELATIVIST
How would we stop them? That’s rich, coming from a realist. More often than not it’s
the notion of an unchangeable reality that is used to prevent change or action. People
say ‘be realistic’, ‘face the facts’, ‘get real’, ‘life isn’t fair’, ‘it’s human nature’,
‘market forces’.
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If you think about it for a minute, you’ll see that relativism is actually more moral
than realism, not less moral, because it acknowledges that things must be argued for
and not just taken as given. It acknowledges peoples’ interest, bias, commitment.
Realism deceives, hides that interest and bias behind a veil of truth. Look at
something like scientific racism: bias and group interests masquerading as fact and
truth. The truth is there is no truth: realism operates against that truth and so is less
moral than relativism.
REALIST
But you seem to be denying the reality of death.
RELATIVIST
OK. What kind of death? Murder, manslaughter, death in war, justifiable homicide,
crime of passion, accident? All very constructed, not at all self-evident, hordes of
lawyers, doctors employed to argue for one or the other.
REALIST
But.
RELATIVIST
I know. I know. You’re going to invent a supposedly non-constructed example like
you did with the rock, which will be just as constructed.
Listeners, you really have to watch realism, it’s so tricky; it’s like stage magic. He hits
the table, removes his hand, and the table is simply there, without any visible means
of support. The constructive act that introduced it – the constructive act that represents
it in a certain way – is invisible, is not acknowledged.
Realism is particularly devious because the procedures it uses are hidden. Realism is
actually just like relativism, it’s just a version. The difference is that realism is
rhetoric that denies its own existence; relativism is rhetoric that acknowledges its
rhetorical nature.
JANE DIBBLIN
Hello. My name’s Jane Dibblin and I’m interviewing Lisa Lazard, a lecturer in
psychology at The Open University.
Lisa, could you just explain to me a bit more in your own words about what you
understand the difference to be between the realist approach and the relativist
approach?
LISA LAZARD
The realist approach is perhaps the one that most people tend to understand, because
it's the one we tend to use in our everyday lives, and underpins a lot of common-sense
ways of making sense of the world. So realism assumes that there is a reality out there
that is separate from us, separate from our perspectives, separate from human
meaning-making practice.
So realism would suggest, in a very broad sense, there are lots of different versions of
realism I should point out, but the basic sense of it is that the world as we understand
– so tables, chairs, rocks, down to things about our ourselves, so things like memory
processes, for example – have an independent reality that really can't be tampered
with.
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Relativism, on the other hand, assumes that actually all those things that I’ve just
mentioned are embedded in human meaning-making practices. So if we take memory,
for example, we know that it is embedded within human meaning-making, because
the account of a memory that we might give would look very different if we were a
witness in a court of law, compared to if we were telling the same event, or the same
memory of an event, at a party.
So, in other words, there are lots of different versions that we can construct about
memories or about any aspect of our social world. Just to give another example: your
account of an argument, or of a memory, or of something that's shared between two
people might actually look very different compared to your friend's account of the
exact same event.
So although I think we know these things, making sense of them is actually quite
difficult when we operate with a realist perspective. And I think what we tend to do is
put aside the bits that don't make sense because we know that there are multiple
versions of things, but that's actually quite difficult to make sense of when we also
operate with the idea that there is a world out there that is separate from us.
JANE DIBBLIN
OK, that's very helpful. So I think a lot of people would think, yes, there are different
truths about events, different people would have different truths. And even yourself,
any one person might look back and remember things differently or account for them
differently under different circumstances. But when it comes to something as … What
you're saying, really, is when it comes to something like death, which is used in the
play, although you could say that there are different accounts of, or there are different
ways you might draw a distinction, for example, between murder, or manslaughter, or
accidental death, things like that, those are very complicated.
I think a lot of people would also try and, sort of, hold on to the idea that there's also a
scientific definition, if you like, between the moment when somebody is alive and the
moment when they're dead. So how does that … How is that unpicked, really, by a
relativist?
LISA LAZARD
Death is one of the common examples that are brought up in realism and relativist
debates. And I think what's key to understanding this is that a relativist would not say
that death hasn't happened. There is clearly something that has happened –some kind
of event that is out there and that we can all look at. But your version which you've
just flagged up, this kind of idea of a scientific moment, scientific explanation of
death, is interesting because that's constructed.
What it's doing is appealing back to some objective account of death. But actually the
question is, I suppose, 'How can we distinguish between the scientific account of
death and then other versions of death?' So we have already mentioned the witness in
the court room. So, say it was a murder trial, we have different accounts of this –
you've already mentioned murder, manslaughter and then we have this very objective
account, which you've just inserted – of the moment that the breath leaves the body.

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So, the point is, how do we get to know this truth? All these different ways of talking
about this moment, this death, how do we get to the truth? And a relativist would
generally say that perhaps the aim is not to get at one single truth, perhaps the aim is
to understand these different accounts, and the purpose of these different accounts, for
making sense of this one event.
JANE DIBBLIN
OK. Thank you. And going back to, again, another example used in the play about the
table. So, again, I think a lot of people would say 'Yes, there are different ... you could
accept that at different moments you might ascribe different meanings to a table, or
have different relationships to the table, or use the table very differently.’ However, a
lot of people would then want to say 'Yes, but at the end of the day they're still a
table.' So, again, what would a relativist say to that?
LISA LAZARD
Again, the relativist position doesn't wish to take away the idea that there is some
object, but it's the understanding of it being out there and objective that's at issue,
really. So we know that tables are, again, an artefact of human meaning-making
processes. It's one of those things where, you know, tables were invented, and again
I'm constructing an account now, but tables are part of, you know, human practices.
So although we can say 'Oh, but this is a table', actually you've already kind of said it.
There's lots of different ways that we engage with tables, and you can imagine,
perhaps, a different kind of world where perhaps tables don't exist, because they've
suddenly lost their usefulness. So what it points to is kind of a constructed notion of
something so obvious as a table.
JANE DIBBLIN
So what does the relativist position really bring to students do you think, in terms of
how can it enrich the way that students look at subjects that they're studying?
LISA LAZARD
I've taught relativism for many years and the students that really engage with this
debate – whether these students eventually adopt a more realist perspective or a
relativist perspective – what they all say is that it has enriched their understanding of
what reality is. And suddenly once you engage with this debate, even if you adopt one
position over the other, which you don't necessarily have to do, they're not always so
opposed, it changes your perspective about how things operate in the world.
So, just to go back to my research as an example, I'm interested in gender and gender
relationships. And when you start thinking about gender from a relativist perspective,
for example, it's suddenly not a fixed biological entity that we have to ascribe to.
Suddenly you're able to see the social and political implications of categorising people
as man and woman.
And then all the social implications that that has – for example, around job
opportunities, educational opportunities and so on – it becomes a very different thing
to view – for example, gender – from that perspective. That can equally be applied to
most psychological topics.
JANE DIBBLIN
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So do you think, in a way, that what it is is a door into helping people to question
things in a more comprehensive way?
LISA LAZARD
It certainly allows people to engage critically with the world.
JANE DIBBLIN
That's great. Thank you.

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David Kaposi’s use of existing data

in his research about the Gaza
conflict
Transcript
NARRATOR
In investigating psychology, the tools we choose are often dictated by the questions
we’re asking. Research data can be created, observed or collected, and analysed to
produce original research results. Existing data includes letters and photographs. But
for David Kaposi, it was the mainstream media that provided a unique research tool.
DAVID KAPOSI
I was just interested in the media representation of violence, responsibility, and
identity in the Israel–Palestinian conflict. That was my way into doing research with
existing data. Certain areas are just no go. For an undergraduate research project, you
can’t really do interviews with people in massive distress or people who experienced
trauma. Whereas, if you look at the existing data, there are no such limits.
NARRATOR
Analysing data collected in this way lends itself to a particular method.
DAVID KAPOSI
Most of the work with existing data is media research. Media research tends to be
done from a discursive angle, because whatever you encountered in the media was
always intended for public consumption. So in that sense it’s never really private. And
a discursive approach is very appropriate to do that kind of research.
There are examples for phenomenological research, as well, working with existing
data, but that’s probably quite marginal. For a phenomenological approach, the kind
of human touch is quite important. It’s important to sit there with your interviewees,
to understand what they want to say. It’s often important to actually be there, whereas,
the single most important characteristic of working with existing data is that you don’t
have a face-to-face connection with your data.
NARRATOR
With the excess of potential sources, there is also a unique challenge to sampling with
existing data and also understanding the context of the sample.
DAVID KAPOSI
In interview research, your sample will consist of individuals, of people. That’s
clearly not true with media research. In my research, I just typed in the key term
‘Gaza’ to a data base. And then I had to make a decision, which of those are articles to
use. Most of them related to the war, but other ones were just talking about economic
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issues or just feature articles. It is an actually quite interesting process, how you
decide what will constitute your sample. In a second, you will have thousands of
articles at your disposal. So that’s good and it’s easy.
But on the other hand, I started to find it a bit limiting. For instance, you don’t quite
know where exactly in the newspaper that article was displayed. You don’t know
what was the article next to it. Most importantly, you don’t see pictures. And, of
course, a picture can completely change the context. And context, as qualitative
researchers all know, is very important for us to make sense of even our textual data.
So I found myself, later on in my research, actually going to the British Library’s
newspaper archive to have a sense of the images that dominated the coverage of the
conflict.
I actually had to do something very old-fashioned to have a fuller picture of the
representation of the conflict. With qualitative research we are quite used to thinking
of research as being not empirically generalisable. It’s hardly ever the case that
qualitative samples are representative of some viable population. However,
interestingly enough, with existing data, because we can research the mass media, our
research can have a certain empirical generalisability, because those newspapers
aren’t just read by us; we are partly interested in them because lots of people are
reading them.
NARRATOR
The advantages of using existing data as a research tool extend beyond being able to
tackle difficult and sensitive material.
DAVID KAPOSI
The ethical issues concerning the use of existing data are quite different. Obviously,
we don’t really have the capacity to do any harm, because we are not going to work
with flesh and blood people. This is partly why our opportunity to research topics is
far broader. What tends to be more of a problem is that students venture into areas
where they sort of find themselves a bit upset, without necessarily knowing that in
advance. So I think, in many cases, using existing data, the ethical issues concern the
harm to the researcher, not necessarily to the participants.
So another interesting issue which I think has some ethical implications is that
working with existing data, especially with media data, which is in the public domain,
our research would actually become transparent. Other researchers can look at the
same data; they can decide whether our interpretative things are valued, or they can
advance their own claims. Actually, that can be a very healthy scholarly dialogue
about the data because it’s available for everyone.
I think it is, to some extent, a problem of qualitative research, which is based on face-
to-face interviews, that that qualitative material is often only accessible for the
researchers themselves. Which means that other researchers cannot really contest
those claims. The analysis of existing data is, in a certain aspect, there is not much of
a difference. You will go through the same steps. The close engagement with the data
is as important as in any other kind of qualitative approach.

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The simple fact that we are not in a personal contact with, say, the source of our data,
sometimes can liberate qualitative researchers. When we work with interview data, so
when we know our participants, we might be a bit hesitant to attribute certain
meanings to them. We might think, well, would they agree with it? So in that sense,
the process of analysis with data that was generated by face-to-face encounters can be
a bit restrictive.
There’s another issue because we basically work with what we find out there. That
can mean that it might not correspond to the research questions we have. I would
definitely advise anyone who wants to work with existing data: a research question is
not enough. We need to have a look at the data, a preliminary look, and see whether
our data is, if you like, interesting enough.
NARRATOR
With existing data, the research question can often be influenced by the content you
find. Setting a question in advance is a risk if you’re then trying to find data to fit it.
When David Kaposi researched into the Gaza conflict, his question had already been
asked.
DAVID KAPOSI
I think that, qualitatively, the most important element of the analysis was when I
analysed editorials. And I pretty much allowed the data to speak for itself. I entered
with a pretty open mindset. I was saying, well, I will analyse whatever the editorials
are interested in. And then I found that this was the overriding question for them.
Who is responsible for the outbreak of the war? Why did the war break out in the first
place? And later on, who is responsible for what’s happening in the war? Who is
responsible for killing of civilians? It is these moral questions that the editorials
asked.
So the general message is that when we work with existing data, just like with any
other kind of data, one way to approach is a bottom-up approach, and to look at the
categories, concepts and the general concerns that the participants or the journalists
themselves have, which in my case was the question of responsibility.
NARRATOR
Existing data can offer the big picture in research, though for many areas, a lack of
personal contact or opinion may be seen as a disadvantage. For David Kaposi, this is
not always the case.
DAVID KAPOSI
I would say that the pivotal drawback is also the pivotal advantage, which is the lack
of face-to-face encounter. It is, especially for psychological research, face-to-face
encounter is very important. When we work with existing data, it’s easy sometimes to
find that we are a bit detached. We are on our own, and we don’t really have a
connection to our data.
It’s quite interesting that, although I used the internet for searching and finding my
data, but actually, and I had masses of data, but I still felt an urge to print everything
out. And then, when everything was printed, then I went through those printouts with

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highlighters and pens, and all sorts of things. So, in a way, it became something very,
very old-fashioned.
I felt an urge to somehow establish some sort of human touch, some sort of
materiality. So it’s quite interesting that although the data itself was virtual – I never
met my participants, I never interviewed them, never prompted them – I still felt that I
want to be in touch with my data, which I guess many of us will feel if we work with
existing data, that something is still missing.

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Lisa Lazard (left) talks to Alison

Davies (right) about her study on
parents’ constructions of ADHD
Transcript
LISA LAZARD
Hello, I’m Lisa Lazard and I’m talking to Alison Davies who has written widely
about the topic of ADHD. Could we begin by asking you to summarise the studies
that you’ll be talking about.
ALISON DAVIES
OK. My study was looking at the way that parents with a child who has an ADHD
diagnosis talk about their experiences of having a child with ADHD.
LISA LAZARD
And how did you choose that topic?
ALISON DAVIES
That came about through my work as a psychodynamic counsellor. I was working at
the time with mothers – therapeutically with these mothers. And what struck me is
that nearly all of the mothers I was working with were seeking diagnosis of ADHD
for their children. And although I was working psychodynamically with these
mothers, you know, which means that the focus was very individual, I felt a pattern to
the way these mothers were talking about their experiences. And that pattern seemed
to be around accounting for their decision to seek an ADHD diagnosis.
So that interested me, you know, what was informing this common way of talking
about ADHD. And also why there was a real tension between my response to them
obtaining an ADHD diagnosis and the mothers’ responses. So when a mother said to
me, you know, that ‘My son’s just been diagnosed with ADHD’, I was kind of ‘Oh
I'm really sorry about that; that must be really difficult.’ And it was, ‘No, this is the
best thing that’s ever happened to me.’ It was a relief, you know. So, yeah, I was
interested in what was going on there.
LISA LAZARD
So what was your research question in your study?
ALISON DAVIES
My research question was ‘How do parents talk about their experiences of ADHD,
and how, through discursive action, do parents construct their identities when talking
about their experiences of ADHD?’
LISA LAZARD

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To investigate this question, what methods did you use and how did you come to the
decision of using those particular methods?
ALISON DAVIES
Yeah. I was looking at how the talk of parents constructed identity: I needed to choose
a method that allowed parents to talk. So, kind of interviews and focus groups came to
mind. I decided to start with two focus groups, which served as kind of exploratory
starting points, really. The reason I chose focus groups is that it was quite good to get
as many different opinions as possible right from the beginning, because, in fact, the
themes that emerged within the focus group I then went on to use in the subsequent
interviews that I did with the parents.
LISA LAZARD
And what were the main challenges of using these methods to collect data?
ALISON DAVIES
Both of the focus groups came from parent-support groups. So the difficulty there is
that some of the participants were regular attenders at support groups, so they already
had a kind of relationship formed. But some people came in to join the discussion
group who weren't regular attenders, so they felt a little bit excluded, I think, from
that group discussion. So that was important to make sure that they felt included and
that they, you know, had a right to speak, as well.
LISA LAZARD
From what you’ve just said it sounds like there are some ethical issues, potentially,
with working with this group of participants. What were the ethical issues in your
study?
ALISON DAVIES
Yeah. I think one that I would raise is that, you know, ADHD is a sensitive topic, or
it’s a potentially sensitive topic, I should say. And many of the stories … I mean some
of the stories that the parents shared were horrific, really. You know, stories about
young children attacking their parents with scissors; you know, stories about children
self-harming; that kind of thing. So definitely had to make sure that parents felt safe to
share their stories and that they were aware that they could withdraw at any time. That
was quite important to stress.
LISA LAZARD
Once you collected the data, what made you choose discourse analysis to unpack the
content?
ALISON DAVIES
Yeah. My gut feeling from interviewing the parents is that I was going to be looking
at how mothers, at the time, accounted for their mothering practices, because,
certainly in their talk within the counselling relationship, they were doing a lot of kind
of justifying of their behaviours, lots of defending of, you know, why they were doing
certain things, and lots of blaming, you know, of other people who perhaps who
didn’t hold the same position as they did.
So when I first started my PhD I felt that I would be looking at the talk of mothers and
how they account for their parenting. My understanding of, or how I used, an
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interpretative repertoire is that an interpretative repertoire is a way of talking about a

phenomena that is culturally shared. So it’s a common way of talking about a
phenomena that is understood by people within a particular society or culture. And
what those ways of talking about phenomena do is that they make available particular
identities or ‘subject positions’, as we call them.
So if we think about ADHD: the two common ways of talking about ADHD are to say
that it’s either a medical/biological phenomenon, which makes available then the
identity of the medically abnormal child and the parent in need of kind of medical
support for their children, and also other support: how to manage their children.
Parents also within this framework is normally sympathised with, you know, that they
have a child who, yeah, is medically different. The other interpretative repertoire, is
like a social repertoire, has completely different understanding and makes available
very different identities. So within that framework the child is classified as naughty,
antisocial. And the condition is understood to be the result of a poor environment, and
normally that means poor parenting.
LISA LAZARD
Based on that analysis, what were your main conclusions?
ALISON DAVIES
Yeah. I mean the main conclusion is that ADHD is a highly complex category which
doesn’t have a fixed kind of objective or neutral meaning, really. It does things. So the
meaning of ADHD, and the way that it’s explained, performs different moral
functions and sets up different moral identities for the people um affected by the
diagnosis.
LISA LAZARD
Thank you, Alison, for discussing your work.
ALISON DAVIES
You're welcome. Thank you.

Back to Session 3 MediaContent 2

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David Kaposi discusses discourse

analytic concepts: interpretative
repertoires and subject positions
Transcript
DAVID KAPOSI
Hi. I’m David Kaposi, and I’ll be speaking to you about how to analyse qualitative
data from a discursive psychological angle. In particular, I’ll talk about the
identification of interpretative repertoires and of subject positions.
It can sometimes feel daunting to start analysing qualitative data, especially from a
discursive angle. We sometimes feel it’s easier to apply a phenomenological method,
as it’s interested in experiences. And analysing experiences might just intuitively feel
like an easier thing to do than analysing this rather abstract term, ‘discourse’.
Thankfully, there are several technical concepts to help us analyse the discourse in
qualitative data. These are subject positions and interpretative repertoires. And I’m
going to use these concepts today to analyse the discourse used in an article from The
Times newspaper titled, ‘The myths of hyperactivity’.
First, I should explain what interpretative repertoires are. They can be defined as lines
of arguments comprised from recognisable themes, common places, and tropes. Now,
let’s start reading the article and see whether we can think of any interpretative
repertoires.
‘Anyone who has ever seen a young child enter a room and reduce it in short order to
something resembling a bomb site is unlikely to doubt the reality of hyperactivity, or
to imagine that such hyperactivity is mere naughtiness writ large, nothing more than a
failure of parental discipline. But a symptom is not the same as a diagnosis, and it is
the contention of Richard Saul, a professor of medicine in Chicago, that hyperactivity
is no more a disease than is, say, breathlessness. Rather, hyperactivity and it’s
associated attention deficit is always a symptom of something else.’
There are many things going on in this paragraph, but I think the most important part
is this: ‘hyperactivity and its associated attention deficit is always a symptom of
something else.’ In other words, we can have a suspicion that we encountered an
interpretative repertoire here, which is roughly that hyperactivity is not a cause; it’s an
effect. This will be in the centre of our qualitative data.
Of course, if it is an interpretative repertoire, we expect it to emerge from the data at
other points as well. And, indeed, if we read on, we’ll encounter this interpretative
repertoire in every single paragraph. Now, I have to say that sometimes it’s more

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difficult to identify interpretative repertoires. Sometimes you find more of them than
in this particular article, and sometimes you find them more dispersed in the text.
The next question is, then, how our qualitative data constructs the interpretative
repertoire. What is its content? What is meant by hyperactivity is not a cause, but an
effect? One major sub-theme in the data could be called the availability of alternative
diagnoses. Let’s read another paragraph from the data.
‘Professor Saul claims that an underlying cause can be found in each and every case
of ADHD as it is currently diagnosed. That is to say, ADHD is not a disease in itself,
but rather a constellation of symptoms that are a response to other physiological
defects or to social circumstances. The most common cause, according to him, is
visual defect. Children who are short-sighted, for example, have difficulty seeing the
blackboard and hence become restless, overactive, and disruptive in school. When
their sight is corrected, their behaviour improves.’
Now, what we see here is that better alternatives are presented to explain
hyperactivity. From a supposed cause or diagnosis, hyperactivity turns into a mere
fact. It is simply not true, as this article argues, that hyperactivity is a cause. The list
of possible causes reads, short-sightedness or poor sleep;
or, as you can also read here, ‘Gifted children become overactive and disruptive
because they are bored with lessons that they have already mastered, but their less
gifted peers have not. In other words, what the article is telling us that even being
gifted can lead to hyperactivity.
Now, what are the other components of the interpretative repertoire? If we read this
paragraph, this one about gifted children, we find something which equally relates to
the interpretative repertoire of hyperactivity as an effect, and not as a cause, but seems
to say something more. So let’s read it.
Some gifted children become overactive and disruptive, because they are bored with
lessons that they have already mastered, but their less gifted peers haven’t. If they are
provided with lessons more in keeping with their abilities, their disruptiveness ceases.
In all of these cases, children have been prescribed stimulant drugs by doctors, often
with only partial, and sometimes with no success, and usually with side effects and
the problems of addiction to boot.’
Now, what do we read in this paragraph? What we read is that another component of
the interpretative repertoire is that there are practical problems with diagnosing people
with hyperactivity. In other words, they will be prescribed drugs, which then might
cause either side effects or even addiction.
So what you see is therefore that reading carefully through the qualitative data reveals
more and more aspects of the main interpretative repertoire. Here I identified two.
One was the existence of alternative diagnoses, and the other was practical problems
with a hyperactivity diagnosis.
Let us now turn to the second technical concept which can help you analyse
discursive or qualitative data. This is ‘subject positions’. Subject positions, or
identities, are defined in the textbook by Alison Davies and Mary Horton-Salway as

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pre-existing the individual and circumscribing the experiences and interactional rights
that can be claimed.
This, I think, is a useful definition which highlights for us the fact that whatever
content we encounter in qualitative data, it will be intimately involved with identities,
positions, perspectives; it won’t come out of nowhere; it is always coming from a
certain perspective. On one side, it will construct these positions; on another, our data
will come from these and definitely not other perspectives.
Now, you might think this is all very well, but how does this help us analyse the text?
As you read the first paragraph, you might find yourself thinking, who is speaking in
this article? Whose take on the world and hyperactivity do we encounter? And in the
case of this article, it becomes quite clear. It is coming from a distinctive perspective.
It is a certain Richard Saul, whose thoughts on hyperactivity are reported. His position
is therefore very relevant in analysing our qualitative data discursively.
But then you find yourself asking, who is Richard Saul? What does his position
represent? Should we believe him and trust his opinion and the interpretative
repertoire he constructed for us? Immediately on encountering him, we read his
designation, ‘professor of medicine in Chicago’. That is, Richard Saul is not anyone
giving his opinion on hyperactivity, but is constructed by the text as an authority. He
seems to have better credentials to teach us about hyperactivity than, say, a football
player would, or a politician.
However, it’s worthwhile reading the article again, specifically looking at how
Richard Saul’s subject position is constructed. Whilst his professional credentials are
reported, we also find some other characteristics towards the end of the article. So
let’s read this bit.
‘At the end of each chapter describing a condition or situation that results in ADHD,
Saul gives us a clinical vignette in which he rescues a patient from the ineffectual or
harmful treatment of other doctors, and succeeds where they have failed. Whether or
not this is true, one soon tyres of the sound of a self-blown trumpet.’
So the Richard Saul whose take on hyperactivity we read about is not just designated
as a professor, but also as someone who comes across as enjoying the sound of a self-
blown trumpet. That is to say, he’s a bit of an egotist. And also, a couple of sentences
later, the author of the article says, ‘One has an uneasy feeling that one is here re-
entering the world of quackery from which the author seeks to rescue us.’
In other words, the position of Saul is constructed as something compromised:
compromised on a personal level, because he is constructed as an egotist, and also
compromised on a professional level as, despite being a professor of medicine at
Chicago, he’s also characterised as a bit of a quack. Therefore, the article constructs
the subject position of his source as partially trustworthy – not fully, only partially.
As I said in the beginning, we all feel – and I am no exception here – that analysing
qualitative data from a discursive perspective can be daunting. However, I hope this
video has also demonstrated that it can be an interesting exercise. So I very much
hope that if you do choose discourse analysis for your project, you won’t just work on
it very hard; you will find it as an enjoyable exercise. So good luck with it.
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Back to Session 3 MediaContent 3

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