La hipótesis de la interlengua.

Discursive psychology can be seen as an umbrella concept linking a broad range of research from different disciplines together (Hepburn & Wiggins, 2005). Discursive psychology has been described as a “very broad church” in that researchers have demonstrated a “dazzling inventiveness in their combination of approaches, methods, epistemological, and ontological positions” (Abell & Walton, 2010, p. 686). Within these discursive psychologies, the Bakhtinian dialogical understanding of the person is arguably being realised (Billig & Shotter, 1998).

Potter and Wetherell’s (1987) ‘Discourse and Social Psychology’ is often acknowledged as one of the pivotal publications which paved the way for a discursive psychology (McAvoy, 2007). The label ‘discursive psychology’ was introduced later by Edwards and Potter (1992), to differentiate a body of work from Discourse Analysis, which emphasised “‘psychology’ as topic and focus in a way that ‘discourse analysis’ did not” (Edwards, 2012, p. 3). In 2012, a special issue of the British Journal of Social Psychology was dedicated to discursive psychology, marking its development as a distinct approach over the past quarter of a century (see Augoustinos & Tileaga, 2012). For Wiggins and Potter (2008), this version of discursive psychology builds upon the core observations that language is constructed and constructive, action-oriented, and situated. The focus is on the categories, constructions and orientations through which a sense of agency is attributed to the person in constructing their worlds (Wiggins & Potter, 2008). This discursive psychology has been argued to assert a mostly agentic person who has the “freedom…to draw upon language as a cultural resource for his or her own ends” (Burr, 2003, p. 63). However, as Willig (2001) noted, discourses can “facilitate and limit, enable and constrain what can be said, by whom, where and when” (Willig, 2001, p. 107).

Wetherell (1998) suggested “a more eclectic discursive approach” to discursive psychology to better acknowledge the interaction between agency and structure (p. 405). I have adopted the concept of bricolage, or researcher-as-bricoleur, to piece together an appropriate discursive psychology for this research. The

67 French word bricoleur has been applied by qualitative researchers to define those who are increasingly using an eclectic range of methodological approaches together (Denzin & Lincoln, 2000, McLeod, 2001, Kincheloe, 2001). As Watts (2010) noted “we are no longer bound by the rigid scientific rigour and instead we seem to adopt a ‘pick n mix’ approach that is adaptable to the circumstance and needs of the research question” (Watt, 2010, p. 51). As such, it has been argued that discursive psychology should strive for eclecticism and refrain from endorsing one particular kind of discursive psychology (Riley et al., 2007).

I take the approach that language is embedded in our histories (Wetherell, 1998) and reflective of the voices of others (Bakhtin, 1981). When people talk about a topic or issue, they draw upon the available and well established discourses surrounding that topic (Edley, 2003). These widely established discourses have become known as ‘interpretative repertoires’ (Potter & Wetherell, 1987; Wetherell, 1998). Interpretative repertoires can be described as the reoccurring patterns within talk or text that emerge in the analysis of data (Taylor, 2003). Korobov and Bamberg (2004) argued that where interpretative repertoires are understood as pre-established ways of talking about the world, there is a risk of ‘discursive determinism’. Thus interpretative repertoires should be understood as accomplished rather than simply given or provided by the wider social and cultural context. Interpretative repertoires are considered “not so much preformed…but performed” (Van Patten & Williams, 2008, p. 452), which links to the theoretical understanding of ‘identity’ as a performance (Goffman, 1959).

What people accomplish within their use of ‘interpretative repertoires’ can be further understood if accompanied by the concept of positioning “where individuals strategically pick a discursive position among those available, which when practiced over time become part of a repertoire to be employed in varying contexts” (Van Patten & Williams, 2008, p. 452). Hall (1988) argued that who we are is always related to the available positions and that there are limits on the various positions we can take up within talk whilst still providing a credible

68 account. Althusser (1971) argued that language constructs people as ‘subjects’ by drawing people into particular positions or identities. Dialogue can be considered as having ideological effects upon how we experience our worlds in that we have a ‘discursive subjectivity’ (Sullivan, 2012). Therefore the concept of positioning is often central to discursive psychological approaches (Edley, 2001), and plays an important role within my methodological framework. Within the analysis of the data, I examine who is implied in the data (Edley 2001) and ask “what is this discourse doing?” to position the speaker in relation to ‘place’ and ‘identity’ (Willig, 2001, p.93).

To attend to the contradictory or dilemmatic nature of talk, Billig (1991, 1992) drew upon Bakhtinian dialogism to research ideological thinking in dialogue. He argued that people’s perspectives on topics such as ‘national identity’ were often contradictory, with opposing arguments made by the same speaker. This was theorised to be due to the dilemmatic nature of common sense notions, or the ideologies we live by, “society’s way of life” (Billig, et al., 1988, p. 27). Billig et al. (1988) differentiated these ideologies from the classic Marxist notions of ideologies as being consistent sets of ideas that uphold dominant social structures (e.g. religion, class), and identified ‘lived ideologies’: the beliefs, values, ideals, and practices of a group, society, or culture which can often be incoherent, disjointed and contradictory (Edley, 2001). Lived ideologies or common sense notions can be effective in social interaction as they are often shared, used, and widely understood (Burr, 2003).

In this sense, lived ideologies are similar to the concept of ‘interpretative repertoires’ in discursive psychology (Potter & Wetherell, 1987). In research on Britishness and the discursive construction of ‘place’ and ‘national identity’, Wallwork and Dixon (2004) make use of Billig’s (1991) notion of ideology as shared conventions of common sense that support and maintain particular forms of social structures. Wallwork and Dixon (2004) found that in newspaper articles published for the Countryside Alliance19, the shared understandings

19

The Countryside Alliance is a coalition that aims to promote rural ways of life in the UK (Wallwork & Dixon, 2004).

69 (ideologies) of the ‘rural idyll’ of the English countryside were discursively and rhetorically constructed as central to British identity and worked to maintain and preserve rural ways of living. Previously discussed research by Dixon and Poll (2011) on rhetorical nature of talk about Figuera’s Well, finding that some ‘place’ constructions worked to normalise and unproblematise, whereas others functioned to undermine and discredit particular versions of people-place relationships. Edley (2001) argued that the dilemmatic nature of lived ideologies can make them “flexible resources for everyday sense making” (p. 203). By analysing talk from a discursive psychological approach that encompasses dilemmatic thinking, I can attend to the lived ideologies around living alongside railways. For example, constructing something as ‘disruptive’ or constructing something as ‘usual’ (Goffman, 1956; Bush et al., 2001) could be interpreted as an ideological dilemma. Subsequently, I draw upon the notions of ‘lived ideologies’ and ‘ideological dilemmas’ (Billig et al., 1988) within this discursive inquiry to examine identities of ‘place’ as dialogical and contradictory. This differs from my use of ‘interpretative repertoires’ which have been primarily applied to specific instances of talk (e.g. common phrases, metaphors) which are relatively coherent across different accounts of living alongside railways. Although it is important to note that the concepts of interpretative repertoires and lived ideologies are overlapping and related concepts as they enable speakers to accomplish ‘identity work’ in dialogue.

4.7 Conclusion

In this chapter, I have embraced my responsibility as the researcher to make clear the epistemological and ontological positions underpinning this research (Madill et al., 2000). In doing so, I have explained how a social constructionist position was appropriate given the focus on language and dialogue and the aim of understanding how residents negotiate environmental conditions within their talk about ‘place’ and ‘identity’. This chapter aimed to clarify how multiple realities are possible and how language mediates our ‘experience’. Another key feature of social constructionist research is that the researcher’s influence is

70 often acknowledged in that “it is not possible to apply a method to arrive at a reality independent of human action” (Cresswell & Hawn, 2011, p. 1). In the following chapter, I address issues of reflexivity alongside outlining the ‘techniques’ adopted to generate data for this research.

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Chapter Five: Methods

5.1 Introduction

This chapter is primarily concerned with the ‘techniques’ (Bernard, 2000) employed to generate knowledge and the choices made in the planning of this inquiry. The social constructionist position and discursive psychological approach outlined in the previous chapter are drawn upon in the following account of how data was generated in this research. Postmodern research “moves us into arenas where subjectivity is both assumed and appreciated” (Russell & Kelly, 2002, p. 1) and as such, I start this chapter by establishing the researcher as an integral part of research and aim to continue this thread throughout this chapter and into the following chapters of analysis.

Previously, I discussed how taking a qualitative approach related to my involvement in the ‘Human Response to Vibration in Residential Environments’ project funded by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Subsequently, my involvement in the Defra project and working within its methodological framework has shaped this research. Rather than report the research decisions made as if they were neutral and objective, I attend to my influence on the research to enhance the credibility and trustworthiness of this study (Guba & Lincoln, 1985; Morrow, 2005). Central importance is therefore placed upon reflexivity, the process whereby researchers examine their role and influence within their research project (Mason, 1996). Within discursive psychological work, reflexivity has and continues to be a major component (Potter, 2010); one that has become commonly used as a criteria with which to evaluate qualitative research (Alvesson & Sköldberg, 2009; Cooper & Burnett, 2006; Hsiung, 2008).

It is also in this chapter where I clarify the decision to focus on living alongside railways as the research context. Alongside the epistemological and methodological positions taken up in this research, this choice of context

72 informed the use of qualitative interviewing to generate data. I argue that the use of qualitative interviewing lends itself both to the research aim and to the discursive psychological approach developed. The sampling method used to recruit participants, closely tied to the Defra project, is also outlined and discussed. The participants who took part in this research are introduced, followed by a reflection on how ‘who I am’ may have impacted upon the interview situation. I conclude by outlining my discursive psychological approach to the analysis of the data, before moving on to the analysis chapters of this thesis.