The "boomerang" effect of the radicalism in discourse analysis

Although the role of the action and of the social practices cannot be denied in the
construction of semantic scenarios for our representations of the world, once again
radical antimentalism and the pragmatic reductionism of the RDA generates several
inconveniences. The action does not explain everything.
It is certainly possible to bring back a representation to the social and cultural
practices already given, as is highlighted in the TRS which - as mentioned - articulates
levels and construction
“(...) I have not started from the individual, or rather cognitive, representations. And because I do not
believe that, by association, by relationships or statistical diffusion, these may generate a coherent and
stable social representation. In effect , this is a fact of institution, of prescribed and regulated
communication. Fundamentally, as Gellner wrote: "we think what we must think”. Our culture thinks in
us. Both conceptually and verbally we are exceptionally well prepared.”
(Moscovici, 1999, p. 223, my translation)
It is, however, hard to maintain that the social representation does not itself perform a
role in orienting the action and that this role is not merely re-producer (the
representation as mnemonic repertoire of interiorised social practices reflected in it), but
at times innovator in relational contexts. These contexts are certainly regulated by
normative systems of expectations, social prescriptions, etc., yet are also possible
scenarios of change. The action produced in a present relational context is also
evocation of actions previously performed (and of discourses spoken), but may also
modify the scripts of the past, introducing new repertoires thanks to the anticipating
representation of the events (all things told, the language itself is a dynamic fact and the
element at the same time more stable and more changing of a culture).
“One could say, following Rommetveit 1974), that ordinary language provides us with culturally and
socially transmitted drafts of contracts. We categorize states of affairs within the multifaceted social
world and optionally elaborate and realize these draft of contracts. Commmunicative genres, like social
representations, are only partialy determined, allowing them, in each situation, to be modified, created and
re-created.”
(Markova, 2000, p. 456)
In the absence of every pre-given entity, another aspect that risks being phagocytized
in the “discursive imperialism” of the RDA is, therefore, the temporal dimension (i.e.,
the role of the past in orienting the practices and the contingent discourses, but also the
role of the future). The individual can be considered a "position" in a contingent
argumentative context, but the discourses spoken in the past or those imagined and
projected into the future (were they only reduced to argumentative roles played as
characters in search of an author) influence on the discourses or linguistic games in the
present. It is hard not to consider the role of the memory, both personal and collective,
in producing interiorised repertoires of scripts that orient the present action and the role
of the imagination in changing the registers of discourse-actions (we know how much
this has been true also in the logic of scientific discoveries).
According to the RDA, the SRT would be characterised by scanty attention towards
the constructive role of the discourse and of the social practices. This criticism seems
unmotivated for a series of reasons. The theory of social representations (SRT) and
discourse analysis (DA) are both focused to a large extent on the study and analysis of
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