Discursive Psychology

Discursive Psychology is a theoretical and methodological framework for analyzing discourse. As an approach, it surfaced in the late 1980s and early 1990s and has been taken up for use in a variety of fields. Discursive psychology begins from a social constructionist assumption that sees discourse as constructive and constructed. The approach includes three strands, which are related and often intersect but have differing primary foci: reframing psychological constructs in the context of social use, understanding ideological and discursive patterns and their use for forwarding particular worldviews, and attending to the sequential organization of discourse. Discursive psychology values naturally occurring data, although scholars have successfully analyzed interview data through a discursive psychology lens. The quality of a discursive psychology study is advanced across the research process. A sub-approach, critical discursive psychology, has explicitly integrated discursive psychology methodological approaches with critical theories of power and ideology.