Alexandra Giroux

Talk is a central activity in social life and language is a crucial issue because it constructs ideas, as well as ideas are constructed by language. The way language is acting in his own right and how people use it has also to be considered. Different kinds of analysis are helpful to understand what is happening in the language. This essay will provide a critical comparison of conversation analysis, discursive psychology, and critical discourse analysis, which all provide a range of complementary and competing approaches to the social study of language. In a first part, these three disciplines will be presented. Then, the way they complete and compete will be highlighted. In a third part, an analysis of the role played by these three disciplines in social studies will be provided.

Conversation analysis (CA) is studying with details the way that people converse with others, how the talk-in-interaction works and how language is performed as a social activity. It is a distinctive analysis of the organisation of every day language use. It provides a “fine grained analysis” of language, or in other words, a micro level analysis. One of the pioneers of this discipline was Sacks who was interested in turn-talking: when people speak and when they do not. The approach is non cognitive. CA examines speech actions such as greetings, invitations, requests, interruptions and so on, in the course of the participant’s interactions. CA shows that talk is part of a context: it is indexical. Talk is also constitutive: it is reflexive. The material used is a very detailed and high quality transcription – called Jeffersonian – made from tape recordings. Pauses, hesitations or stresses on some words can have an important meaning. The analysis is not abstract but comes from the language in use. The analysts observes how categories – from gender to looks – are put to perform social actions – rather than behaviour: the question to be asked is how categories are used in conversation and what people do.

The emergence of Discursive Psychology (DP) in UK in the 1990′s has been strongly influenced by CA. It is a thorough a reworking of psychology and it does not spring from sociology. The focus of discursive psychology is the action orientation of talk and writing. The issue is the social actions or interactional actions being done in the discourse (Edwards and Potter 1992, p.2). DP deals with memory, attribution an identity. It dissects how people report and explain actions and events. DP explores “the situated, occasioned, rhetorical uses of the rich common sense psychological lexicon or thesaurus” (Edwards and Potter 2005, p.241). The analysts have look at ways in which people talk about attitude, memories, emotions, and so on.  Speakers can be seen to accomplish a wide variety of social actions via talk; accounts produced are highly context-specific. It examines as well discourses to highlight how psychological themes are handled. DP focuses on person and event descriptions in both talk and text. The aims are to show how language figures in social process and to ask what the relationship of language is to other elements of social processes. Sometimes, the analysts use visual images, body language, or any kind of semiotic material, for their analysis. In DP, language is not the resource but the topic. The central aim of DP is to analyse the processes of normalization and naturalization and to enquire about whose interests as best served by different discursive formulations

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is an interdisciplinary kind of analysis, finding its roots in CA, linguistics, continental philosophy and so on. Some famous thinkers of this discipline are Fairclough, Wodak or van Dijk. Regarding this method, there is no accepted canon for data collection. The first aim of CDA is to be critical, to discern connections between language and other elements in social life which are often opaque. The focus of CDA is the production and reproduction of power and domination, frequently hidden, through language. In texts, different discourses can struggle to achieve dominance. The analyst focuses on the way categories are created and sustained in the discourses. Subjectively, the positions of the subjects are constructed in the different texts and reinforce thus the power. Objectivity is not achievable. CDA wants to give a voice to the powerless by challenging capitalism, racism or sexism in discourses. This approach of the talk focuses on social problems and is quite political. The analysis should have an emancipator goal, in order to uncover how discourse disadvantages many powerless groups. The work of Michel Foucault is really linked with CDA, as this discipline tries to develop an “archaeology of thought”. The issues of domination and exploitation established and maintained culturally and ideologically, are borrowed from Marx.

This essay has just briefly explained what CA, DP and DCA were. Now, a comparison will show that they have some differences and some similarities regarding both theoretical and methodological areas. First, they complete on some points. They are all concerned with surroundings context of production of talk. All the analysts explore language as a topic in its own right. Data collection is used here, as it is a main method in sociology. In CA and DP, analysts are not interested in what is under language but they want to show how words are put together to do what they do. For all CA, DP and DCA, the basis is a piece of transcribed text. They all examine the accounts of the participants and highlight which functions they perform. Talk as social activity is recognised and how people do things with talk is explored. Another common question is to show how the world is constructed through talk: they all adopt a constructionist position. The last common point is quite cynical but has to be mentioned: they have been accused of triviality because people have said that they were concerned with unimportant matters and that they just added little to existing knowledge (Wooffitt 2005, p.73).

But sometimes, regarding to substantive and methodological issues, these practice compete as well. CA is an own discipline although CDA and DP are two approaches to discourse analysis (DA). Some of this approaches are linked with sociology, others are not. “CA originated in sociology and is still strongly associated with that discipline although it has been influential in other areas such as discursive psychology” (Taylor 2001, p.312).  DP comes from social psychology. CDA is influenced by sociology but by several other disciplines as well. While CA and DP provide a fine grained analysis, CDA is a coarse grained analysis. The transcriptions used are very different: Transcriptions of CA for instance needs more details and has to conform to the Jefferson’s rules. CDA focuses generally on the content, the discourses, the repertoires. CA is not based on the assumptions and beliefs of the analyst; the analysis is unmotivated and starts with the data. On the contrary, a discipline such as CDA has first a theory about power and then looks into discourses and tries to find it in different materials. As it has been shown previously, CA and DP treat discourse as a topic in its own right. On the contrary, CDA considers that discourse is a helpful resource to analyse power. The problem is that sometimes, it misses the performance by focusing only on this topic. CA and to some extend DP are more concerned by the participants. On the contrary, CDA is more concerned by the analyst. As CA focuses only on talk, CDA and DP consider texts and even visual materials. CA is not concerned with rhetoric whereas DP and CDA consider the rhetorical organisation of what is said. CA forgets and ignores the context but DP and CDA are interested in it. CA is an objective discipline although CDA is more subjective. CA, DP and CDA have different links with the concepts of “social action” and “action orientation”. CA is interested in talk as social action: how people use categories, how order is achieved. DP is more action orientated, for instance it can study the way people use emotion as a justification of what they have done. CDA is concerned neither with social action, nor with action orientation because it tries to link with wider social-structural issues.

Understanding how CA, CDA and DP are competing and completing leads to analyze the role played by them in the social studies. The study of language is essential to understand social issues in a myriad ways. The question to be asked is what is the nature of social order in the world? Sociology helps to understand our world, to unpack it, and thus to make it better. Language is a determining fact in social relations and a good understanding of it is important to be able to position oneself in the relation with the others. All these disciplines are complementary, they undermine one other and the tension between them is productive. In any case, it is impossible to achieve “the” truth because it does not exist. The critic is always possible and may be necessary sometimes. For instance, CA is not guessing but it uses very precise steps which can be used if a researcher wants to make a critics. More than just being a theoretical subject, these practices can help us, on really pragmatic issues. For instance, Potter has helped understanding public disturbances during the Bristol riots (Wooffitt 2005, p.75). So, these disciplines are not exclusively concerned with the routine but can be exploited to explore important matters. In the same way, CDA deals with the way psychology can be used to damage people’s lives and how a marginalisation can be seen as a pathology. So, the study of language helps us to have a better understanding of our society and each discipline will focus on one aspect of it.

But, it is important to be aware that all these theories have their limits. All this discipline can and should work together. If one is weaker, the other one can compensate it. For instance, CA can help to understand power: how it is generated, collaboratively produced and normatively organised. CDA is critical of CA methodology, arguing that to fully understand how language works it is necessary to draw from wider and political context. It can be argued as well that CA is challenged by qualitative methods such as CDA or DP. CDA, buy trying to find power everywhere, may sometimes have a wrong interpretation of the facts. Moreover, the critique is not always accomplished. We can also point out that CDA, rather than focusing on discursive practice, is usually more concerned with abstract discourses. If some sociologists want to work on power, it could be interesting for them to use CA and CDA: CA alone is not enough because it forgets the context but added to the analyse of repertoires, it can really help to understand a text. It is too naïve to believe that discourses will help to completely understand our society. For instance, analysing only discourses and repertoires offer an impoverished view of human conduct. All these disciplines have to work with other social studies to achieve the goal of a better understanding of life.

Language is the mirror of our society. The more it is fully apprehended, the more the society is understood. Different disciplines can help to comprehend talk. Each of them has their specificities: CA for talk-in-interaction, DP for memory and emotion, CDA for power. Sometimes, CA, DP and CDA are competing, but sometimes they are completing in the social study of language. Although all concerned with surroundings context of production of talk, they all have quite different approaches of these texts. So, it is important to use all their potential to dissect the different hidden issues. They should sometimes work together to take the biggest benefit, even if it is important to always have an auto-critic method. Studying the language is important to get some insight of the social studies but it is not enough. That is probably why sociology contains several different interdisciplinary subjects.

References:

Edwards, D and Potter, J. Discursive psychology, mental states and descriptions in Molder, H and Potter, J. 2005. Conversation and cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Edwards, D and Potter, J. 1992. Discursive psychology. London: Sage Publication
Wetherell, M and Taylor, S and Yates, S. 2001. Discourse as Data: A guide for Analysis. Walton Hall, Milton Keynes: The Open University
Wooffitt, R. 2005. Conversation analysis and discourse analysis. London: Sage Publications