The "boomerang" effect of the radicalism in discourse analysis

“How should we deal with the fact that our accounts of how people’s language use is constructed are
themselves constructions? (…)
It is possible to aknowledge that one’s own language is constructing a version of the world, while
proceeding with analysing texts and their implications for people’s social and political lives. In this respect,
discourse analysists are simply more honest than other researchers, recognizing their own work is not
immune from the social psychological processes being studied.”
(Potter & Wetherell, 1987, p. 182)
The practice of reflexivity implies not only a meta-theoretical glance (namely a
problemising reflection on one own's theoretical opinions and on one's own research
methods in comparison with other options and other methods), but also a glance of, so to
say, meta-institutional nature (i.e. a reflection on the "strategic" role that the theoreticalmethodological
options perform in the scientific community, setting the various reference
network one with respect to the other, within a composite series of dominant, dissident and
marginal positions, in other terms that which is defined "psy-complex" - i.e. “the
sprawling speculative and regulative network of theories and practice that constitute
psychology” (Ingleby, 1985; Rose, 1985)”. (Parker, 1994, p. 246).
“The way that social research is contextualized now will also look a little more complex, for the
“context” is, in this account, not an objective background against which the researcher renders an account of
the phenomenon in question. Rather, the context is the network of forms of subjectivity that place
contradictory demands on the research. In social psychological research there is an array of competive
interests and agendas that frame the production of proposals; the expectations and demands of “subjects” or
co-researchers; and the career investiments and projected autobiographies that exist in tension in the
academic world. (...) Among the structure that frame the experience and reflection of the researcher are those
of the psy-complex. If we want to take reflexivity serioulsy, we have to “ground” it in the institutional context
in which we carry out our research.”
(Parker, 1994, p. 250)
The argument of tu quoque or of the reflexivity (application of the theory to itself)
makes it not only legitimate, but also desirable, that the auto-reflective caution should enter
to become part of the deontology equipment of each researcher attentive to the problems of
his specific research contributions (whatever his paradigmatic orientation may be).
Nevertheless doubts are raised regarding the way in which the reflexivity is, in fact,
practised in the scientific community of the supporters of discourse analysis.
“It would not be helpful, in this case, to write off experience as just another social construction, or to
reduce the expressed dissatisfaction with positivism as a rhetorical trope, discursive position, or warrant. It is
here that the political limitations of social constructuionist (Gergen, 1985) and some discursive analytic
approach (Edwards and Potter, 1992) become apparent. It is necessary to reflect on the structure of the
institution of psychology as it operates now.”
(Parker, 1994, p. 240)
“Reflexivitiy also refers to the equal status, within discourse analysis, of researchers and their
respondents, as well as the accounts offered by each. This means that discourse analysts must find a way of
building into their research opportunities for participants to comment upon their own accounts and those of
the researcher. Sherrard (1991) criticises discourse analysts for not always meeting this criterion in their
research.”
(Burr, 1995, p. 181)
It must be recognised that the criticisms on this side are joined by as many detractors
of discourse analysis, as by their own exponents (inter-alia: Abrams & Hogg, 1990;
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