Embodying discourse analysis: Lessons learned about epistemic and ontological psychologies

Abstract

Responding to critiques of ‘Including social discourses and experience in research on refugees, race, and ethnicity’, and providing suggestions for future work in discursive psychology, this article expands upon the complex and dynamic character of research in socioculturally informed social science. Through a better understanding of experience and an awareness of broader social discourse, one is able to consider verisimilar ontologies, which are fundamentally socio-linguistic phenomena. It is important to understand the value in using discursive psychology’s analytical practices; however, an awareness of the need to expand upon such practices is necessary in order to better understand how experience is cultivated in dynamic and rhythmic co-regulated social constitution. Future research should endeavor to develop techniques that are not necessarily formulaic, but are still examinable for the purposes of determining good versus bad work.