Human Studies 27: 335–340, 2004. C 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.


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What is “Discursive Psychology”? JEFF COULTER Department of Sociology, Boston University, 96 Cummington St, Boston, MA 02215, U.S.A. (E-mail: [email protected])

Potter and Edwards maintain that my critique of “discursive psychology” was misguided and unfair to their work.1 I shall leave the reader to re-visit the writings of theirs, which I discussed in the original paper. I am not convinced by their protestations, but, again, the reader can decide for him or herself if my initial characterization of their views was, indeed, a caricature of their stated position(s). I do not actually believe that much truly hinges on this issue, as I will try to demonstrate in what ensues. I challenged the claim that there is a genuinely coherent and distinctive project for “discursive psychology.” Not knowing quite how to understand what Potter, Edwards and others mean by the notion of “psychology” in their various writings (especially since they explicitly disavow Cartesian commitments and reject all contemporary cognitivist conceptions of psychology), it is very difficult to ascertain what set of analytical problems and purposes they are putting in the place of post-Cartesian ones. Much of their actual, empiricallybased transcription analyses (even if astute and interesting in their own right) appear to me actually to have a twofold objective: primarily, they reiterate long-standing Ethnomethodological and Wittgensteinian themes, and, secondly, they undertake analyses of discourse (notwithstanding their various protests that “discourse” is not a settled notion in the intellectual scene in which they are participants). I cannot see that their programmatic remarks genuinely develop upon the themes they reiterate, nor can I readily share their interpretation of these themes, and I tried to point out some of the misunderstandings involved. With all due modesty and deference to their contributions to the anti-cognitivist campaign, I fail to discern in their efforts anything which (1) advances this campaign, and (2) which truly distinguishes their programme of discourse analysis from Conversation Analysis, Linguistic Pragmatics2 or anything else in the social science pantheon. More to the point are their following protests, to which I shall reply seriatim. Potter and Edwards object to my use of scare quotes around their invocations of the notions of “cognitive processes,” “refined” and “motive” ( p. 167). They do so on the spurious grounds that I believe that “their very use is dubbed erroneous by Coulter” (emphasis in original). Not so. I can conjure many contexts within which such notions may be clearly, intelligibly

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and appropriately used, but not those within the theoretical (as distinct from the vernacular) contexts of use. When they attack me for invoking the concept of the mental in discussing “mental predicates,” they make the assumption that my (and Ryle’s) use of “mental” in such an expression is a harkening back to a variant of Cartesianism! Not so – there are many and varied uses of the concept of the “mental” which do not presuppose nor license any form of Cartesian and/or cognitivist theorizing whatsoever. (e.g., “He’s mental!” meaning, on occasion, “He’s crazy!”). Nonetheless, I must agree that this usage might appear to be a hostage to (mis)fortune, so, I propose the following amendment: why not speak of what Ryle and others termed “mental predicates” as predicates of personal-attributes with diverse grammars of avowal and ascription? If Potter and Edwards were to concede as much, then what is (left of ) the point of their programme of “discursive psychology”? The abrogation of the reification of the so-called “mental” has already been pretty thoroughly accomplished by the Rylean/Wittgensteinian critique of Cartesianism, so what is left for “discursive psychologists” to do in this respect? One recurrent problem in their program, as I see it, is the following: Potter and Edwards fail consistently to distinguish between three separable issues. The first, to which we all assent, is the requirement to subject Cartesian and cognitivist theorizing to technical (largely conceptual) critique when it is advanced by professionals in the human sciences. The second, which I have also emphasized but upon which Potter and Edwards appear (at times) to equivocate, is the extension of any such critique to lay persons who happen to deploy a version of such theorizing. Why should they be exempt, any more than a lay person who makes a scientific error or fails to use a piece of technology properly is not exempt from correction by a specialist? The third, and more contentious point, is the notion that, somehow or other, Cartesian theorizing is built into some of our uses of language for non-theoretical purposes. The latter is a central point of dispute in my original discussion, and nothing in Potter’s and Edwards’ reply effectively refutes my negative position on this issue. One seriously troublesome feature of the Potter-Edwards critique of my dissenting article is their particularistic, disciplinary appeal: thus, they argue, in a variant of an ad hominem mode of attack, that my use of the concept of a “concept” is: “potentially a major source of confusion given (its) typical cognitivist interpretation in psychology, and it was to academic psychology that our arguments were addressed” (169). I would have thought that such a position amounted to a virtual infantilization of their co-disciplinary antagonists, construing them as so blinkered by their own disciplinary modes of theorizing that none of them could be credited with understanding nor appreciating logical arguments originating from disciplines (such as analytical philosophy, logical grammar, conceptual analysis) beyond their own immediate intellectual

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purviews. It is, truly, to be hoped that such is not the case. Whatever may be the actual empirical state of affairs to which Potter and Edwards appeal, nothing in their comment here recommends itself to serious intellectual, logical, argument. Many people do incorrect mathematical calculations, are not mathematicians, etc., but none of this gainsays either the intelligibility or the truth of, and especially the universality of, mathematical propositions. The same holds for sound conceptual points. Potter and Edwards make some pretty odd claims in the course of their critique. For example, they consistently confuse the objectives of Ethnomethodological analyses of practical reasoning and action with Wittgensteinian logico-grammatical analyses. I tried my best to disentangle the two pursuits, culminating in what I argued would be a productive synthesis of both in the pursuit of the anti-Cartesian and anti-Cognitivist critique. For example, Garfinkel’s sociological programme explicitly eschews appeals to what is “beneath the skull” of agents, arguing that there is nothing of interest to sociology there, only brains (which are, obviously, of paramount interest to neuroscientists, etc.), but such a position needed (I argued) to be explicated as either (1) a methodological postulate or (2) an intellectual commitment with ontological status. I argued for the latter, and claimed that Wittgenstein’s later logical work grounded that case. (See my article, 1999, p. 176, last paragraph). If Potter and Edwards do not agree with this position, then I am utterly at a loss to make any sense of remarks such as the following: For example, there may be practices where there is some point to the idea of referring to private mental states, though not as the analyst’s favored theory of language and mind ( p. 174). But what could possibly be the point here? Of course, many people speak, on occasion, as if Cartesian conceptions (and Freudian conceptions, and Chomskian conceptions, and materialist-reductive conceptions, etc.) of the “mind” and of the “mental” were defensible. (Note, however, that antiCartesianism does not entail the abandonment of any concept of the “inner” – only Cartesian misrepresentations of what this can mean in our language.) The point of any anti-Cartesian programme of work in the human and behavioral studies is, surely, to refute, reject, correct or at least countermand such postulations, is it not? Potter and Edwards give license to a peculiar sort of conceptual anarchy, but without specifying exactly why they wish to do so, given their explicitly anti-Cartesian and anti-Cognitivist standpoint. For example, they preach some sort of vague conceptual charity toward what they describe as “clinical attributions” ( p. 174), but give no clear reason(s) why such “attributions” ought to be exempt from their overall intellectual commitments and strictures. It is almost as absurd as a scenario in which mathematicians who wish to study how mathematics is learned in schools should approach such an enterprise by being willfully, deliberately blind to the tenets

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of mathematical rigor, proof, accuracy, etc., on the grounds that, empiricallyspeaking, some kids just cannot count. . . . The latter may be true (of course it is!), but what informational content is this “finding” supposed to yield other than the obvious? Sociologically speaking, it may be useful to ascertain the sorts of circumstances in which children fail to acquire mathematical skills, but is “discursive psychology” committed to the analysis of conditions within which people tend to misuse their “mental” vocabulary? It does not appear so from Potter’s and Edwards’ various writings. Then why appear to be neutral to the fact that some people just do misuse the language they purport to speak, reason badly, misunderstand the conceptual articulations of arguments they purport to advance, mispronounce words in their native tongue, etc., etc.? If such a celebration is other than a merely empirical exercise to display the obvious, I am at a loss to see its intellectual objective, and above all, to understand how on earth it may contribute in any serious manner to the critique of mentalism, cognitivism and the various other psychological and philosophical doctrines that we are presumably united in opposing? One issue which Potter and Edwards raise is assuredly a straw man. It pertains to my putatively indefensible reliance upon what they term: “invented, disembedded examples” of discourse to make some logical arguments I advance. In a futile effort to make an empiricist-inspired case against conceptual analysis, they raise the issue of paraphrasing. (Note here that, although one dimension of empiricism is an appeal to statistical frequencies, contrary to Potter and Edwards the concept is far from exhausted by such a restricted conception of what it covers). Let us consider one of my so-called “invented, disembedded examples” and put it into a real-worldly, actual empirical context, and see what difference such a transposition might actually make. I used the expression: “It slipped my mind” as a way of noting that its adequate (although by no means unique) paraphrase could be: “I forgot (it).” My point was to note that the use of the concept of “mind” in any such use of such an expression does not commit its user to a Cartesian (nor to any) theory of Mind. This bothers Potter and Edwards, because I did not use a transcript of an actual, empirically-gathered instance. So allow me now to replace my objectionable example with a real, empirical instance, and let us see what (if any!) difference it would make. Here is the empirical instance, clearly transcribed: My wife: Jeff, did you check the mail? JC: Sorry, honey – it slipped my mind. If anyone dares to challenge this as a merely “invented” instance, let him or her call my bluff, or, better, my wife! I have a tape, to boot. Well, I am a genuine empiricist in the best sense of that much-abused term. So – does this mean that JC (namely, me) is a Cartesian? Do I have a Theory of Mind, such that something slipped therefrom? Or did my locution signify, simply, as I said it,

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that I had forgotten to check the mail as I usually do when I return home after my wife does? There is nothing gained by the invocation of empirical instances here, any more than there is to be ascertained by a willful disregard for the brilliantly invented texts of great realist playwrights or from the silliness which attends a failure to recognize much-used expressions when they are actually quoted with ordinary contexts of use assumed as such. Of course, for the purposes of Conversation Analysis, there is much to be gained by inspecting what can appear as counter-intuitive sequences of talk, but CA is neither a competitor of, nor in antagonism to, conceptual-grammatical analysis. In fact, to be able to do CA requires, for the most part, a deep mastery of language. Naturally, there will be cases where conceptual analysts’ instances are so fraught with self-confirming artificialities or outright incoherencies that they cannot be appealed to in logical adjudications about correct/proper use, but settling such disputes as may arise about such cases does not require any sort of blanket appeal to empirically-recorded cases (which cases?) any more than does the fact that promises ordinarily oblige promissors necessitate a survey of acts of promising to confirm its (logical) truth. I am told that my use of “paraphrases” works by “remaining in the realm of disembedded conceptual stipulation” (p. 175), and, to make matters apparently worse for me, I am instructed that “the entire field of conversation analysis speaks to the dubiousness of any notion of paraphrase as a useful analyst’s category.” Further on, I am told, given the developments of CA: “We would expect such a study [of people offering re-descriptions] to evaporate the notion of ‘paraphrase’ rather quickly.” However, on pages 176–177 of their response to my critical article, Potter and Edwards present a transcript in which one party utters the following: “In the very back of your mind were you sort of toying with the idea that somehow your husband may have had (.). . .” They begin their discussion of this sample of discourse as follows: “The point we want to note is that ‘the back of your mind’ could be paraphrased in a non-Cartesian manner” (p. 177). Could it really? Well, then, what happened to the earlier skeptical strictures against the very intelligibility of the idea of paraphrasing? Here, surely, there is a concession to my earlier observations. . . The authors continue, pointlessly, to my mind: “But would such a paraphrase help?” Help what? Help whom? For what purpose? It can certainly help me insofar as the case presented in their fragment of discourse provides absolutely no empirical evidence whatsoever of any commitment to Cartesian theorizing on behalf of its interlocutor as a prerequisite for grasping any possible sense that it might make. Potter and Edwards reckon that any such “paraphrase” (now, perish the thought!) might be confusing “for the actual analysis” (p. 178) – but, analysis of what? And for what purpose? In footnote 4, page 179, our authors contend that I am guilty of treating ordinary, non-philosophical folks’ discourse using “mental” predicates “as if they were engaged in some form of philosophizing in opposition to Wittgenstein.” This

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last move, is, in my view, truly dishonest, because I have stressed time and again the distinction between members’ lay (and thus potentially corrigible) theorizing using concepts, on the one hand, and their practically, engaged use of concepts in activities devoid of theoretical purposes, on the other. This is a distinction crucial to the Ethnomethodological analysis of practical activities and interactions and the conceptual analysis of ordinary language-use for the purposes of correcting metaphysical (i.e., idle, anomalous, etc.) uses of linguistic concepts. And that remains the nub of contention between us. There is, in sum, nothing in Potter’s and Edwards’ rebuttal which leads me to revise my original core position: theirs is a programme without a genuinely distinctive raison d’etre.

Notes 1. Jonathan Potter and Derek Edwards (2003). Rethinking cognition: On Coulter on Discourse and Mind. Human Studies 26: 165–181. Jeff Coulter (1999). Discourse and mind. Human Studies 22: 163–181. 2. On which, see Par Segerdahl’s brilliant critique of Levinson’s and others’ efforts to sustain the fiction that ‘linguistic pragmatics’ can have a coherence independently of a commitment to ‘semantics’, itself challenged systematically by the work of the later Wittgenstein. See Segerdahl’s Language Use (Macmillan Press, UK, 1996).