This readily accessible text introduces the key elements of a discursive approach to psychology. This approach focuses on how discourse - naturally occurring talk and text - can be studied and understood as the accomplishment of social action . Building on discourse analysis, the authors present an integrated discursive action model which leads to a radical reworking of some of psychology's most central concepts - language, cognition, truth, knowledge and reality. The implications of a discursive perspective for such topics are explored alongside a sustained argument against the perceptual-cognitivist emphasis that currently dominates psychology. A particular theme is the reconceptualization of memory and attribution. Rather than exploring the 'truth' of accounts and their relationship to underlying cognitive states, Edwards and Potter examine the communicative and interactional work performed when individuals, with interests, describe and explain past events, construct factual reports and attribute mental states. They effectively show memory and attribution to be 'two sides of the same coin'. The authors draw on a wide range of empirical materials to demonstrate the methods and analysis underpinning their approach.

These include examples of courtroom cross-examinations, everyday telephone conversations, newspaper reports, television interviews and political discourse. Discursive Psychology reframes fundamental issues of language and mind as social practices realized in discourse. It offers a profound challenge to existing orthodoxies while also establishing an exciting new agenda in the social and human sciences. It will be essential reading in psychology, communication studies, cultural studies, sociology and all those social sciences concerned with text and talk.