The "boomerang" effect of the radicalism in discourse analysis

Moreover other authors have underlined at the same time a position open to an
“integrative view”, but also attentive to the reductionism implicit in the radicalism of DA:
“No doubt interest in the conversational and rhetorical approach has permitted “a lucid and efficacious
rereading, in this specific perspective of many classical themes and problems in social psychology, for
example that of attitudes, social categorization, accounts” (De Grada and Mannetti, 1992). However, over
and above the undoubted interest of the contextualization of verbal exchanges, which these types of approach
permit by largely ignoring intraindividual cognitive processes, the proposals which would confine the study
of SRs exclusively to conversational analysis risk being limiting and reductionist”.
(de Rosa, 1994, p. 288)
“However discourse analysis can indeed enrich social-representations studies (...). Therefore, I agree
with van Dijk (1990) who has this to say (...): "In my opinion, no sound theoretical or explanatory framework
can be set up for any phenomenon dealt with in social psychology without an explicit account of socially
shared cognitive representations. Whereas discourse is of course of primary importance in this expression,
communication and reproduction of social representation ... , this does not mean that discourse or its
strategies are identical with such representations.”
(Doise, 1993, p 168)
“Although on several occasions we have maintained - and still maintain - interest for a constructive
integration of the theoretical and methodological prospects of discourse analysis in the wider framework of
the Social Representations theory, we hold this “monotheistic” option to be excessively limiting. If within the
human species the word is a privileged channel for defining, objectifying and constructing the reality, the
reality has not been exclusively defined by means of the word: images, sounds, conducts, rites... are other
ways for generating and communicating “multiform” aspects (not necessarily complementary and, in some
cases, antagonist) of social representations.”
(de Rosa & Farr, in press)
The inventory of a representation, understood as an exhaustive summary of its discursive expressions,
has no operative meaning (...).The "competence", if you like, overruns the "performance" (...). The analysis
of the representations must of necessity exceed the simple discursive phenomenon considered as such (...).
That the statement may be an effect, a concomitance or a trace of the representation does not imply that this
possesses all the properties that can be discovered in the statement.
(Rouquette, 1994, p. 170-171, my translation)
“(...) it matters little for these critics that the theory of social representations has always insisted on the
symbolic character of cognition (see Moscovici, 2000). Here the vagueness of social representations is held
to be its insufficiently radical departure from a ëmentalisticí discourse, but as Jovchelovitch (1996) has
observed, the rush to evacuate the mental form from the discourse of social psychology is leading to the recreation
of a form of behaviourism.”
(Duveen, 2000, p.14)
The need for a reconstruction of these dynamics of confrontation within the scientific
community between different paradigmatic visions stems from the recognition that at
times more than of dialogue it is a question of monologue, which sometimes assumes more
the modality of a clash unilaterally pursued by the RDA, in which the prospect of other
paradigms are rhetorically assumed solely for reaffirming the right to speak by difference,
to autolegitimise oneself in a position that marks the territory by oppositions.
The usefulness of the confrontation has been also recognized by the protagonists of the
meta-theoretical debate about SRT, such as Potter and Billig (1992), who write:
“It is precisely a sign of health of this debate that it has revolved around competing theoretical
frameworks. It has not remained at the level of many psychological debates, which focus exclusively on
empirical adequacy. The intellectual debate of the “thinking society” should neither be characterised by
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