A Model of Discourse in Action

In the last fifteen years or so a number of varied strands of research have been dubbed 'discourse analysis': speech act orientated studies of conversational coherence (e.g. Coulthard and Montgomery, 1981); so called 'discourse processes' work on story grammars and the like (e.g. van Dijk and Kintch, 1983); the 'Continental' discourse analysis of Foucault (e.g. 1971), which has been concerned to show the way different cultural entities are constituted discursively as well as the historical development of that constitution; and finally specific developments within the sociology of science which arose in part as a consequence of methodological debates on the role of discourse in research methods (e.g. Gilbert and Mulkay, 1984). The approach we have developed (Edwards and Potter, 1992; Potter and Wetherell, 1987; Wetherell and Potter, 1988) draws on important features of both the Continental and the sociology of science work; although it is also strongly influenced by developments in conversation analysis (e.g. Atkinson and Heritage, 1984) and rhetoric (e.g. Billig, 1987). It also emphasises the centrality of constructionist processes (Gergen, 1985); and this is a facet of discourse analysis we will develop further in the current article.