The Handbook of Discourse Analysis

The Discursive Turn in Social Psychology 693
So we have families of models distinguished by their subjects, that of which they
are models. But neither heuristic abstractions nor explanatory models are freely
constructed. They are constrained by sources. There is a limit to what we are permitted
to imagine as explanatory models. They must, if plausible, be possible realities.
The way to ensure that is to set up a double analogy. The model is an analog of the
unobservable state, object, or processes we are assuming really explain the phenomena
of interest. But in most cases the model is itself an analog of something we can
already observe. The corpuscular model of an atom is modeled on a small material
particle, say a grain of sand. Democritus is said to have thought of the atomic model
of matter by observing the dancing motes in the sunbeam. So that Bacon’s corpuscles
are not unlike the grains of sand that can be made to stick together into a sandcastle
or more drastically into glass. Heuristic models too are constrained by reference to
sources. How do we know what to look for in abstracting an analog from a complex
phenomenon? How do we ensure that we abstract the same way in all aspects of our
construction? The technique of the physical scientists has been to double the analogy
here too. Darwin’s famous “natural selection” model directs our attention to certain
features of the biosphere, but his abstractions were controlled by thinking of the
living world as if it were a huge farm. He knew a great deal about creating varieties
by domestic selection of favored breeding pairs. He looked for something similar in
nature, and found it in the greater breeding potential of plants and animals that were
most “at home” in their environments.
Both kinds of models deal with problems of observation. In the one case the reality
is too difficult to observe and study conveniently, while in the other it cannot be
observed at all. An experiment is not primarily a test of a hypothesis, but the running
of a working model of some process in the world under study that cannot conveniently
be examined in its natural form. Studying genetics by experimenting with garden
peas and drosophilas in a jar is an example of the making of models of aspects of the
natural world and seeing how they run. Experiments in the human sciences too must
have this character to be scientifically acceptable.
3 Models in the Human Sciences
There are plenty of examples of both types of model in human studies, and indeed in
the patterns of thinking of everyday life. Every time one consults a map one is using
a heuristic abstraction from the countryside. Maps are simplified and reduced abstractions
from the reality of a region. Every time one declares oneself to be fighting
off a virus one is thinking in terms of an explanatory model. Viruses, until recently as
unobservable as quarks, were invented to explain the onset and course of diseases for
which no bacterial cause could be found. But what about models for psychological
phenomena themselves?
The dramaturgical model in social psychology that has been used to good effect in
several contexts is an abstraction from the messy goings-on it is used to represent, for
example the behavior of the staff of a restaurant. To the student of social psychology,
the shift of style and other indicators of cognitive slant as a waiter moves from
kitchen to dining room presents a puzzle to be solved. How are these performances