- Professor Elizabeth Stokoe
Department of Social Sciences
Loughborough University
Loughborough
LE11 3TU - +44(0)1509 223360
- Loughborough University, Social Sciences, Faculty Memberadd
- Psychology, Languages and Linguistics, Gender Studies, Membership Categorisation Analysis, Conversation Analysis (Research Methodology), Discursive Psychology, and 6 moreConversation Analysis, Training and Development, Language and Social Interaction, Ethnomethodology, Mediation, and Conversation Analysis (Languages And Linguistics)edit
- I study social interaction across a variety of everyday and institutional settings, using conversation analysis (CA).... moreI study social interaction across a variety of everyday and institutional settings, using conversation analysis (CA). These settings include telephone inquiries across third, public and commercial organizations, commercial sales, hostage negotiation, interaction in medical and legal settings including doctor-patient and police-suspect/victim communication, and in SaaS technologies.
I have developed 'CARM' - the Conversation Analytic Role-play Method (www.carmtraining.org), as an alternative to the more traditional role-play approach to communication skills training. CARM is an ESRC Impact Case Study and I was awarded the Loughborough University Enterprise Award for social impact in April 2013. In 2017, working with A Dozen Eggs, I launched www.carmeggs.co.uk, working collaboratively on brand-design-language projects.
I was co-Editor of Gender and Language 2011-2014, and Associate Editor of British Journal of Social Psychology 2009-2013. I was also founding editor of Mediation Theory and Practice (2016-2019). I have been Associate Dean Research (2013-2018) and Associate Pro Vice-Chancellor [REF] (2019-2022) at Loughborough University. I was an industry fellow at Typeform (2018-19) and at Deployed (2021-22).
In addition to academic publishing, I am passionate about science communication, and have given talks at TED, New Scientist, Google, Microsoft, and The Royal Institution, and performed at Latitude and Cheltenham Science Festivals. My book, 'Talk: The Science of Conversation', was published by Little, Brown (in 2018) and I have a co-authored book on 'Crisis Talk' coming out later this year. My research and biography were featured on BBC Radio 4’s The Life Scientific. During the Covid-19 pandemic I participated in the Policing and Security sub-group of SAGE SPI-B and am a member of Independent SAGE behaviour group. I am a Wired Innovation Fellow and in 2021 was awarded Honorary Fellowship of the British Psychological Society.edit - Dr Eunice Fisheredit
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This position paper identifies a crucial opportunity for the reciprocal exchange of methods, data and phenomena between conversation analysis (CA), ethnomethodology (EM) and computer science (CS). Conventional CS classification of... more
This position paper identifies a crucial opportunity for the reciprocal exchange of methods, data and phenomena between conversation analysis (CA), ethnomethodology (EM) and computer science (CS). Conventional CS classification of sentiment, tone of voice, or personality do not address what people do with language or the paired sequences that organize actions into social interaction. We argue that CA and EM can innovate and substantially enhance the scope of the dominant CS approaches to big interactional data if artificial intelligence-based natural language processing systems are trained using CA annotated data to do what we call natural action processing.
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The COVID-19 pandemic has shone a light on the complex relationship between science and policy. Policymakers have had to make decisions at speed in conditions of uncertainty, implementing policies that have had profound consequences for... more
The COVID-19 pandemic has shone a light on the complex relationship between science and policy. Policymakers have had to make decisions at speed in conditions of uncertainty, implementing policies that have had profound consequences for people's lives. Yet this process has sometimes been characterised by fragmentation, opacity and a disconnect between evidence and policy. In the United Kingdom, concerns about the secrecy that initially surrounded this process led to the creation of Independent SAGE, an unofficial group of scientists from different disciplines that came together to ask policy-relevant questions, review the evolving evidence, and make evidence-based recommendations. The group took a public health approach with a population perspective, worked in a holistic transdisciplinary way, and were committed to public engagement. In this paper, we review the lessons learned during its first year. These include the importance of learning from local expertise, the value of learning from other countries, the role of civil society as a critical friend to government, finding appropriate relationships between science and policy, and recognising the necessity of viewing issues through an equity lens.
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Marketing research shows that organizations tailor communication for particular customer ‘segments’, but little is known about the live design of interaction for different categories. To investigate this, we examine telephone calls to a... more
Marketing research shows that organizations tailor communication for particular customer ‘segments’, but little is known about the live design of interaction for different categories. To investigate this, we examine telephone calls to a holiday sales call-centre (for ‘seniors’) and a university admissions call-centre (for ‘young’ students). While topically different, call-takers in both datasets requested callers’ email addresses in order to progress service. Using conversation analysis, we examine how these requests were designed, where and how ‘age’ was made relevant, and how subsequent service provision was handled in a way that matched callers’ presumed age categories. Contrastive to the static notion of ‘segments’, we show how recipient design is bound up with categorial considerations while being responsive to the live unfolding of actual interaction. The article demonstrates how a comparative collection-based approach can be used to analyse the relevance of social categories ...
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In this chapter, we have attempted to do three things. First, we have illustrated an approach to Membership Categorisation Analysis (MCA) that focuses on sequential and categorial analysis and shows the way categories, and the... more
In this chapter, we have attempted to do three things. First, we have illustrated an approach to Membership Categorisation Analysis (MCA) that focuses on sequential and categorial analysis and shows the way categories, and the resourcefulness of their inference-rich quality, can be used prospectively and retrospectively to proffer and solidify on-going accounts, states of affairs, event descriptions, and ‘fact’. In addition to the analysis of different kinds of spoken and written interaction, we have also shown how the movement between description and categorisation functions to construct, constrain and produce accounts of ‘what is happening’ and ‘what happened’ in news reporting. Second, we have tried to show Sacks’s machinery of membership categorisation in practice. While one reads many descriptions of the terms of MCA, including the notions of ‘inference-rich’ and so on, these terms can seem complex and can also be used to justify the kinds of ‘wild and promiscuous’ analysis that Schegloff has criticised MCA for conducting. In contrast, we have shown how the inference-rich nature of categories is built into people’s categorial practices. As noted earlier, it is not just that categories are, in theory and before empirical observation, ‘inference rich’, but that we can see that, and how, people treat categories as carrying inferential resources, in the design of their turns in which categorial formulations appear (Stokoe, 2012b). In other words, the inference-rich nature of categories is observable from the endogenous orientations of participants and is a resource for constructing accounts that can be reconstructed, contested, provisional, deniable – on their way to becoming solid, factual and beyond construction. Third, we have shown how one can build MCA studies of the identification of practices from different sorts of large datasets. As Stokoe (2012b) has argued elsewhere, for MCA to survive as a method, in any way distinct from the more dominant conversation analysis, or as adding something to the analysis of social interaction, studies of practices that can be transferred across settings are required. Not only does such an approach provide an empirical base for other researchers, in the same way that CA has done, but it provides for the possibility of applying research findings to create impact for users and practitioners (Stokoe, 2013). Stokoe (2012b) has described a number of principles and steps for beginning and proceeding with a categorisation study, whether they start with an interest in a particular category in mind (e.g., ‘nutter’) or categorial phrase (e.g., ‘it’s human to get angry’; ‘speaking as a parent’), or with a more inductive ‘noticing’ of a set of spoken or written interactional materials. The key is to collect data across different sorts of settings; including both interactional and textual materials. Data collection may be purposive (e.g. gathering together instances of particular categories in use because of an a priori interest in that category) or unmotivated (e.g. noticing a category’s use and pursuing it within and across multiple discourse sites). Once collected and organised, analysis should look for evidence that, and how, recipients orient to categories, devices or inferences for the [Page 70]interactional consequences of a category’s use; for co-occurring component features of categorial formulations; and for the way participants within and between turns build and resist categorisations. In this way, a ‘categorial systematics’ approach to MCA works with collections of instances of possible categorial phenomena gathered from different discourse contexts, with the aim of uncovering the systematic centrality of categories and categorial practices to action.
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OBJECTIVE Guidelines recommend that clinicians should offer patients with obesity referrals to weight management services. However, clinicians and patients worry that such conversations will generate friction, and the risk of this is... more
OBJECTIVE Guidelines recommend that clinicians should offer patients with obesity referrals to weight management services. However, clinicians and patients worry that such conversations will generate friction, and the risk of this is greatest when patients say no. We examined how doctors actually respond to patient refusals, and how patients reacted to clinicians in turn. METHODS Conversation analysis of 226 GP-patient interactions recorded during a clinical trial of weight management referrals in UK primary care. RESULTS Some clinicians responded to refusals by delivering further information or offering referral again. These actions treated patient refusals as unwelcome, and acted to pursue acceptance instead. However, pursuit did not lead to acceptance. Rather, pursuing acceptance lengthened consultations and led to frustration, offence, or anger. Clinicians who accepted refusals and closed the consultation avoided friction and negative emotional displays. CONCLUSION Patient refusals have the potential to create negative consequences in the consultation and clinician responses were key in avoiding these. When clinicians acknowledged the legitimacy of patient refusals, negative consequences were avoided, and the conversation was briefer and smoother. PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS When patients refuse the offer of a free weight management referral, GPs should accept this refusal, rather than trying to persuade patients to accept.
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This article reports on the results of two studies into telephone calls from patients to receptionists at three different UK GP surgeries. The research shows how staff can drive the telephone call forwards to benefit both the practice and... more
This article reports on the results of two studies into telephone calls from patients to receptionists at three different UK GP surgeries. The research shows how staff can drive the telephone call forwards to benefit both the practice and patients
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This chapter examines the relationship between social action and identity using the methods of conversation analysis, and shows how social actions such as complaints about transgressions, or denials of culpability in events, bring into... more
This chapter examines the relationship between social action and identity using the methods of conversation analysis, and shows how social actions such as complaints about transgressions, or denials of culpability in events, bring into play self- and other-categorizations of the persons involved. Drawing on data collected as part of our study of neighbourhood disputes, we demonstrate how ascribed identity categories (e.g. ‘I’m a single mother’) and category-implicative descriptions (e.g. ‘she’s eighty three’) function systematically as constituent features of members’ methods for accomplishing action. Studying the recurrent ways through which categories are deployed in interaction permits the empirical investigation of, and sheds light on, the social organization of cultural knowledge.
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La « méthode du jeu de rôle en analyse conversationnelle » (Conversation AnalyticRole-play Method, CARM) est une approche qui, sur la base de preuves tirées del’analyse conversationnelle, propose de s’entraîner à faire face aux problèmes... more
La « méthode du jeu de rôle en analyse conversationnelle » (Conversation AnalyticRole-play Method, CARM) est une approche qui, sur la base de preuves tirées del’analyse conversationnelle, propose de s’entraîner à faire face aux problèmes etobstacles qui peuvent survenir dans les interactions institutionnelles. Les méthodestraditionnelles de formation reposent souvent sur des interactions par jeux de rôle quidiffèrent systématiquement de l’événement qu’elles sont censées imiter et auquel ellesont l’intention de préparer. En revanche, CARM utilise des enregistrements audio etvidéo de rencontres authentiques. CARM offre un cadre unique pour discuter etévaluer les échanges conversationnels en milieu professionnel. Cette méthode fournitaussi des indicateurs pour prendre des décisions au sujet de la politique et despratiques effectives de communication dans les organisations. Le présent articledécrit les spécificités de CARM et son impact sur le développement professionnel dansdifférentes...
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A key requirement of COVID-19 pandemic behavioural regulations in many countries was for people to 'physically distance' from one another, which meant departing radically from established norms of everyday human sociality.... more
A key requirement of COVID-19 pandemic behavioural regulations in many countries was for people to 'physically distance' from one another, which meant departing radically from established norms of everyday human sociality. Previous research on new norms has been retrospective or prospective, focusing on reported levels of adherence to regulations or the intention to do so. In this paper, we take an observational approach to study the embodied and spoken interactional practices through which people produce or breach the new norm. The dataset comprises 20 'self-ethnographic' fieldnotes collected immediately following walks and runs in public spaces between March and September 2020, and these were analysed in the ethnomethodological tradition. We show that and how the new norm emerged through the mutual embodied and spoken conduct of strangers in public spaces. Orientations to the new norm were observed as people torqued their bodies away from each other in situations where there was insufficient space to create physical distance. We also describe how physical distance was produced unilaterally or was aggressively resisted by some people. Finally, we discuss the practical and policy implications of our observations both for deciding what counts as physical distancing and how to support the public to achieve it.
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This paper was accepted for publication in the journal The Psychologist and the definitive published version is available at http://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-31/december-2018/how-real-people-communicate
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This chapter focuses on the teaching of communication and interaction skills to learners who have already had the chance to acquire the basics of dialogue interpreting (DI) and to practice it through role-playing. It argues that... more
This chapter focuses on the teaching of communication and interaction skills to learners who have already had the chance to acquire the basics of dialogue interpreting (DI) and to practice it through role-playing. It argues that traditional simulated scenarios should be complemented by alternative techniques using authentic data, and research findings about them, and suggests how this can be done with students at undergraduate and especially graduate level, as they learn to adapt their skills to particular interactional contingencies and to make judgments about particular situations. The technique developed by Stokoe (2011a) – the Conversation Analytic Role-play Method (CARM) – will be exemplified using authentic French-Italian interpreter-mediated healthcare data. However, CARM can readily be adapted to fit other languages and/or domains, provided that the teacher has a collection of audio- and/or video-recorded interpreter-mediated interactions available and a thorough understanding of conversation analysis
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We are pushed and pulled around by language far more than we realize, yet are seduced by stereotypes and myths about communication. This book will change the way you think about talk.
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Discursive Psychology is the first collection to systematically and critically appraise the influence and development of its foundational studies, exploring central concepts in social psychology such as attitudes, gender, cognition,... more
Discursive Psychology is the first collection to systematically and critically appraise the influence and development of its foundational studies, exploring central concepts in social psychology such as attitudes, gender, cognition, memory, prejudice, and ideology. The book explores how discursive psychology has accommodated and responded to assumptions contained in classic studies, discussing what can still be gained from a dialogue with these inquiries, and which epistemological and methodological debates are still running, or are worth reviving. International contributors look back at the original ideas in the classic papers, and consider the impact on and trajectory of subsequent work. Each chapter locates a foundational paper in its academic context, identifying the concerns that motivated the author and the particular perspective that informed their thinking. The contributors go on to identify the main empirical, theoretical or methodological contribution of the paper and its impact on consequent work in discursive psychology, including the contributors’ own work. Each chapter concludes with a critical consideration of how discursive psychology can continue to develop. This book is a timely contribution to the advance of discursive psychology by fostering critical perspectives upon its intellectual and empirical agenda. It will appeal to those working in the area of discursive psychology, discourse analysis and social interaction, including researchers, social psychologists and students.
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In this chapter, I will explore the mediation of neighbour and family conflicts through the lens of discursive psychology, focusing particularly on what interaction between mediators and their prospective clients (neighbours, parents)... more
In this chapter, I will explore the mediation of neighbour and family conflicts through the lens of discursive psychology, focusing particularly on what interaction between mediators and their prospective clients (neighbours, parents) tells us about the nature of dispute and the efficacy of mediation. I will describe a research project, from its inception studying neighbour disputes to its culmination in training mediators to better engage prospective mediation clients. The chapter will start by locating this project in the wider fields of mediation, neighbour and family disputes, as well as discursive and interactional work on conflict in interaction. I will describe the collection of large-scale qualitative datasets, including telephone calls to mediation services, environmental health services, and police interviews with arrested suspects in neighbour and family conflict cases. These data were analysed using conversation analysis, in the discursive psychological tradition pioneered by Edwards (e.g. 2005) and Potter (e.g. Potter & Hepburn, 2007). I will show how mediators fail and succeed to attract potential clients to mediation depending on how mediation is explained, and how resistant clients may be persuaded to mediate. Finally, I describe how research findings about what works to engage clients has underpinned national and international mediation training, using the Conversation Analytic Role-play Method. In sum, the chapter will show how discursive psychological research can have big pay-offs in terms of the impact of its findings in real-life settings that matter for people in conflict.
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We provide an introduction to some of the conceptual and methodological debates with respect to the focus of this special issue on -isms (a term used to refer to phenomena, e.g., racism, sexism, and heterosexism), focusing on the... more
We provide an introduction to some of the conceptual and methodological debates with respect to the focus of this special issue on -isms (a term used to refer to phenomena, e.g., racism, sexism, and heterosexism), focusing on the definition and identification of these phenomena. We offer an overview of the different approaches to research in this regard and conclude by summarizing the contributions to this special issue.
Research Interests: Sociology, Psychology, Social Psychology, Epistemology, Conversation Analysis, and 10 moreDiscursive Psychology, Racism, Language, Communication and Culture, Sexism, Heterosexism, Language Culture and Communication, Membership Categorization, Social Psychology of Language, and Psychology and Cognitive Sciences
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Research Interests: Discourse Analysis, Ethnography, Body, Essentialism, Deixis, and 15 morePoliteness theory, Agency, Burrows, Crystal, H, M, P, E, C, N, L, G, Globalisation, J, and A
Research Interests: Psychology and Mediation
A commonly documented phenomenon in educational settings in the UK has been students’ resistance to academic tasks and identity (e.g. Felder and Brent 1996; Francis, 1999, 2000; Willis 1977). This resistance tends to take the form of... more
A commonly documented phenomenon in educational settings in the UK has been students’ resistance to academic tasks and identity (e.g. Felder and Brent 1996; Francis, 1999, 2000; Willis 1977). This resistance tends to take the form of challenging the teacher, joking and doing the minimum amount of work necessary. It has chiefly been researched within the compulsory sector and tends to assert an association between resistance and masculinity, although recent studies suggest a similar pattern among girls (Pichler 2002). In an interview-based study of London schoolboys, Phoenix and Frosh (2001) suggested that antagonism to school-based learning was influential in determining pupil popularity. In a similar study carried out with Australian pupils, Martino (2000: 102) suggested that pupils resisted the teacher’s task and the institutional agenda by preferring to ‘muck around’ in class, ‘give crap’ and ‘act cool’.
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In this article, I investigate intake calls to community mediation services in which disputing neighbors ask mediators to help them resolve their conflicts. These calls are the first point of contact between potential clients and... more
In this article, I investigate intake calls to community mediation services in which disputing neighbors ask mediators to help them resolve their conflicts. These calls are the first point of contact between potential clients and mediators. To maintain their organization's funding, mediators must convert a sufficient number of these callers into clients of the service. Intake calls, however, are not treated as part of the mediation process proper, and mediators are not trained to handle them. I audio-recorded and transcribed approximately two hundred calls to mediation services based in the United Kingdom and then analyzed them using conversation analysis. I identified several factors routinely present in these intake calls that seemed to prevent disputants from ultimately engaging in the mediation process; I characterize these factors as “barriers to mediation.” These barriers include callers' lack of knowledge about mediation as a service and mediators' often ineffective methods of explaining the process. In particular, callers rejected mediation services when the mediators explained that mediation is an impartial service. Some of the mediators, however, managed intake calls differently, describing it more effectively, expressing empathy or affiliation with callers, and thus were able to overcome many of the callers' most common concerns about the process. In this article, I also discuss this study's implications for understanding the institution of mediation and for training mediators.
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Within psychology and, more broadly, the social sciences, the teaching of qualitative methods has become a common and required component of research methods training. Textbooks and journals that support such training are increasingly... more
Within psychology and, more broadly, the social sciences, the teaching of qualitative methods has become a common and required component of research methods training. Textbooks and journals that support such training are increasingly dominated by various forms of individual and (focus) group interviews as methods of data collection, whilst constructionist forms of discursive psychology, particularly those influenced by conversation analysis (CA) and ethnomethodology (EM), seem to be declining. This article aims to tilt the balance in qualitative methods teaching back towards these methods, showing that and how they are uniquely able to respecify and challenge some of traditional psychology's key assumptions about ‘experience’ and ‘identity’. To do so, EM/CA methods are shown in use. Drawing upon five separate data corpora, findings from previous and ongoing research into, broadly, student identity and the ‘student experience’ of university education are presented. Rather than at...
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Previous research on the conversation analytic phenomenon of ‘repair’ has focused on its design and function in spoken interaction. Conversely, research on written text or writing rarely focuses on interaction. In this article, we examine... more
Previous research on the conversation analytic phenomenon of ‘repair’ has focused on its design and function in spoken interaction. Conversely, research on written text or writing rarely focuses on interaction. In this article, we examine repair in written discourse; specifically in online settings. The data corpus comprises one-to-one quasi-synchronous Facebook ‘chat’. First, we show that, as in spoken interaction, repair happens. This basic observation supports conversation analytic arguments that features of talk, like repair and laughter, do not ‘leak randomly’ into interaction but are precision-timed and designed to accomplish action. Second, we report on two types of repair: visible repair which can be seen and oriented to by both participants in the interaction, and message construction repair, which is available only to the message’s writer. While the practice of message construction repair is made possible through the affordances of the online medium, it nevertheless shows ...
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The biggest challenge for voice technologies is action recognition. This is partly because current approaches prioritize abstract context over practical action, and tend to ignore the detailed, sequential structure of talk by emulating... more
The biggest challenge for voice technologies is action recognition. This is partly because current approaches prioritize abstract context over practical action, and tend to ignore the detailed, sequential structure of talk by emulating scripted, often stereotypical dialogue. This provocation paper analyzes an urgent case of how a caller and a 911 dispatcher work together to achieve action recognition. We outline their 'seen but unnoticed' interactional methods and suggest how computational systems can learn from conversation analysis and use micro-analytic detail to recognize social actions.
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Background GPs are encouraged to make brief interventions to support weight loss, but they report concern about these conversations, stating that they need more details on what to say. Knowing how engage in these conversations could... more
Background GPs are encouraged to make brief interventions to support weight loss, but they report concern about these conversations, stating that they need more details on what to say. Knowing how engage in these conversations could encourage GPs to deliver brief interventions for weight loss more frequently. Objective To examine which specific words and phrases were successful in achieving conversational alignment and minimizing misunderstanding, contributing to effective interventions. Methods A conversation analysis of English family practice patients participating in a trial of opportunistic weight-management interventions, which incorporated the offer of referral to community weight-management services (CWMS). Qualitative conversation analysis was applied to 246 consultation recordings to identify communication patterns, which contributed to clear, efficient interventions. Results Analysis showed variation in how GPs delivered interventions. Some ways of talking created misunde...
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How does talk work, and can we engage the public in a dialogue about the scientific study of talk? This article presents a history, critical evaluation and empirical illustration of the public science of talk. We chart the public ethos of... more
How does talk work, and can we engage the public in a dialogue about the scientific study of talk? This article presents a history, critical evaluation and empirical illustration of the public science of talk. We chart the public ethos of conversation analysis that treats talk as an inherently public phenomenon and its transcribed recordings as public data. We examine the inherent contradictions that conversation analysis is simultaneously obscure yet highly cited; it studies an object that people understand intuitively, yet routinely produces counter-intuitive findings about talk. We describe a novel methodology for engaging the public in a science exhibition event and show how our ‘conversational rollercoaster’ used live recording, transcription and public-led analysis to address the challenge of demonstrating how talk can become an informative object of scientific research. We conclude by encouraging researchers not only to engage in a public dialogue but also to find ways to act...
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BackgroundGuidelines encourage GPs to make brief opportunistic interventions to support weight loss. However, GPs fear that starting these discussions will lead to lengthy consultations. Recognising that patients are committed to take... more
BackgroundGuidelines encourage GPs to make brief opportunistic interventions to support weight loss. However, GPs fear that starting these discussions will lead to lengthy consultations. Recognising that patients are committed to take action could allow GPs to shorten brief interventions.AimTo examine which patient responses indicated commitment to action, and the time saved if these had been recognised and the consultation closed sooner.Design and settingA mixed-method cohort study of UK primary care patients participating in a trial of opportunistic weight management interventions.MethodConversation analysis was applied to 226 consultation audiorecordings to identify types of responses from patients that indicated that an offer of referral to weight management was well received. Odds ratios (OR) were calculated to examine associations between response types and likelihood of weight management programme attendance.ResultsAffirmative responses, for example ‘yes’, displayed no conver...
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6 Asking Ostensibly Silly Questions in Police-Suspect Interrogations ELIZABETH STOKOE AND DEREK EDWARDS In this chapter we analyze a ... studies of police interrogations (eg, Auburn, Drake, and Willig 1995; Komter 2003; LeBaron and... more
6 Asking Ostensibly Silly Questions in Police-Suspect Interrogations ELIZABETH STOKOE AND DEREK EDWARDS In this chapter we analyze a ... studies of police interrogations (eg, Auburn, Drake, and Willig 1995; Komter 2003; LeBaron and Streeck 1997; Linell and Jönsson ...
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In this chapter, I will explore the mediation of neighbour and family conflicts through the lens of discursive psychology, focusing particularly on what interaction between mediators and their prospective clients (neighbours, parents)... more
In this chapter, I will explore the mediation of neighbour and family conflicts through the lens of discursive psychology, focusing particularly on what interaction between mediators and their prospective clients (neighbours, parents) tells us about the nature of dispute and the efficacy of mediation. I will describe a research project, from its inception studying neighbour disputes to its culmination in training mediators to better engage prospective mediation clients. The chapter will start by locating this project in the wider fields of mediation, neighbour and family disputes, as well as discursive and interactional work on conflict in interaction. I will describe the collection of large-scale qualitative datasets, including telephone calls to mediation services, environmental health services, and police interviews with arrested suspects in neighbour and family conflict cases. These data were analysed using conversation analysis, in the discursive psychological tradition pioneered by Edwards (e.g., 2005) and Potter (e.g., Potter & Hepburn, 2007). I will show how mediators fail and succeed to attract potential clients to mediation, and how small changes to the way mediation is explained, and how resistant clients may be persuaded to mediate, can be identified by the analysis of interaction. Finally, I describe how research findings about what works to engage clients has underpinned national and international mediation training, using the Conversation Analytic Role-play Method. In sum, the chapter will show how discursive Stokoe, E. (in press.). How to increase participation in a conflict resolution process: Insights from discursive psychology. In S. Gibson (Ed.), Discourse, peace and conflict: Discursive psychology perspectives. London: Springer. June 2018. 1 psychological research can have big pay-offs in terms of the impact of its findings in real life settings that matter for people in conflict.
Over the past twenty five years discursive psychology has become an influential field in its home discipline of psychology, as well as in many other academic disciplines, with national and international impact. This is the first... more
Over the past twenty five years discursive psychology has become an influential field in its home discipline of psychology, as well as in many other academic disciplines, with national and international impact. This is the first collection that systematically and critically appraises its foundational, classic studies, exploring central concepts in social psychology and discursive psychology’s contribution to foundational critique and respecification in social psychology.
Discursive Psychology explores how discursive psychology has accommodated and responded to assumptions contained in classic studies and discusses what can still be gained from an intellectual dialogue with these classic studies, and which epistemological and methodological debates are still running, or are worth resurrecting.
Discursive Psychology explores how discursive psychology has accommodated and responded to assumptions contained in classic studies and discusses what can still be gained from an intellectual dialogue with these classic studies, and which epistemological and methodological debates are still running, or are worth resurrecting.