Representing Reality: Discourse, Rhetoric and Social Construction - Softcover

Potter, Jonathan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0803984111 ISBN 13: 9780803984110

Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd, 1996

Synopsis

`This is an admirable book which can be recommended to students with confidence, and is likely also to become an indispensable source of reference for those researching fact construction' - Discourse & Society

How is reality manufactured? The idea of social construction has become a commonplace of much social research, yet precisely what is constructed, and how, and even what constructionism means, is often unclear or taken for granted. In this major work, Jonathan Potter offers a fascinating tour of the central themes raised by these questions.

Representing Reality overviews the different traditions in constructionist thought. Points are illustrated throughout with varied and engaging examples taken from newspaper stories, relationship counselling sessions, accounts of the paranormal, social workers' assessments of violent parents, informal talk between programme makers, political arguments and everyday conversations. Ranging across the social and human sciences, this book provides a lucid introduction to several key strands of work that have overturned the way we think about facts and descriptions, including: the sociology of scientific knowledge; conversation analysis and ethnomethodology; and semiotics, post-structuralism and postmodernism.

About this title

Review

`Since the publication of Potter & Wetherell's influential Discourse and Social Psychology, which laid the ground-plan for their version of discourse analysis, work has continued apace... As a progress report, the present text provides a valuable up-date, summarizing the main lines of development and usefully pulling together material heretofore only available from a disparate range of sources... As an introduction to this type of analysis, this is an admirable book which can be recommended to students with confidence, and is likely also to become an indispensable source of reference for those researching fact construction' - Discourse & Society

`Potter leaves the reader wanting more-which is a pretty good place to leave a reader' - Language in Society

About the Author

Jonathan Potter is Professor of Discourse Analysis and Dean of the School of Social, Political and Geographical Sciences at Loughborough University. He has studied topics such as scientific argumentation, current affairs television, riots, racism, relationship counselling and child protection helplines. His main focus recently has been on the study of helpline interaction, on interaction during family mealtimes, on the conceptualization of cognition in interaction research, and on issues of psychology and institutions. He a world authority on qualitative methods and has written on discourse analysis and discursive psychology, focus groups, the study of psychological issues. Recently has raised questions about the over-reliance of social scientists on open-ended qualitative interviews. He has taught workshops and short courses on analysis in 10 different countries.

Edition details

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0803984111
• ISBN 13: 9780803984110
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 263