The article combines discourse analysis and dialogical self theory to propose an integrated model of positioning processes in social interaction. The model incorporates social positioning—a focus for discursive psychology—with reflexive positioning—a focus for dialogical self theory. To illustrate the model, a fictionalized scenario is presented involving two people who meet for a date at a restaurant. The discursive dynamics of the scenario are then parsed using the model. The sequelae to the encounter take in the social rules for conducting dates at restaurants, but also the life trajectories of those concerned, their social worlds, and their internal micro-dialogues. Bakhtin’s concept of “loophole” is invoked to conceptualize reflexivity in the self, in the context of interactional dialogues. In discussion, the prospects for using fictional accounts as tools for developing psychological theory are considered. Without innovation in methods, advances in our understanding of positioning processes may be compromised.
BakhtinM. M. (1981). The dialogic imagination (HolquistM., Ed.; HolquistM.EmersonC., Trans.). Austin: University of Texas Press.
2.
BakhtinM. M. (1984). Problems of Dostoevsky’s poetics (EmersonC., Ed. & Trans.). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. (Original work published 1929)
3.
BakhtinM. M. (1986). Speech genres and other late essays (McGeeV. W., Trans.). Austin: University of Texas Press.
4.
BakhtinM. M. (1990). Art and answerability (LiapunovV., Trans.). Austin: University of Texas Press. (Original work published 1920–1924)
5.
BaraniF.Wan YahyaW. R.Bin TalifR. (2014). “Virtual fictional/factual positioning”: Mediating dialogical concepts in psychological and literary studies. Theory & Psychology, 24, 755–774. doi:10.1177/0959354314553048
6.
BarresiJ.MooreC.MartinR. (2013). Conceiving of self and others as persons: Evolution and development. In MartinJ.BickhardM. (Eds.), The psychology of personhood: Philosophical, historical, social-developmental, and narrative perspectives (pp. 127–146). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
7.
BertauM-C.GoncalvesM.RaggattP. T. F. (Eds.). (2012). Dialogical formations: Investigations into the origins and development of the dialogical self. Charlotte, NC: Information Age.
8.
BilligM. (1999). Commodity fetishism and repression: Reflections on Marx, Freud, and the psychology of consumer capitalism. Theory & Psychology, 9, 313–329. doi:10.1177/0959354399093003
9.
BrunerJ.KalmarD. A. (1998). Narrative and metanarrative in the construction of self. In FerrariM.SternbergR. J. (Eds.), Self-awareness: Its nature and development (pp. 308–331). New York, NY: Guilford Press.
10.
BuberM. (1970). I and thou. New York, NY: Charles Scribner & Sons.
11.
BurkittI. (2010). Dialogues with self and others: Communication, miscommunication, and the dialogical unconscious. Theory & Psychology, 20, 305–321. doi:10.1177/0959354310362826
12.
CaugheyJ. L. (1984). Imaginary social worlds: A cultural approach. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
13.
DaviesB.HarréR. (1990). Positioning: The discursive production of selves. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 20, 43–63.
14.
DawsonP. (1994). Soldier heroes: British adventure, empire and the imagining of masculinities. London, UK: Routledge.
15.
DostoevskyF. M. (2004). The idiot. London, UK: Penguin. (Original work published 1868)
FiremanG. D.McVayT. E.FlanaganO. J. (Eds.). (2003). Narrative and consciousness: Literature, psychology, and the brain. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
GergenK. J. (1991). The saturated self. Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell.
20.
GillespieA. (2010). Position exchange: The social development of agency. New Ideas in Psychology, 30, 1–11.
21.
GillespieA.MartinJ. (2014). Position exchange theory: A social-material basis for discursive and psychological positioning. New Ideas in Psychology, 32, 73–79.
22.
GreggG. S. (1991). Self-representation: Life narrative studies in identity and ideology. New York, NY: Greenwood Press.
23.
HarréR.MoghaddamF. (2003). The self and others in traditional psychology and in positioning theory. In HarréR.MoghaddamF. (Eds.), The self and others: Positioning individuals and groups in personal, political and cultural contexts (pp. 1–12), Westport, CO: Praeger.
24.
HarréR.van LangenhoveL. (1991). Varieties of positioning. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 21, 393–407.
HermansH. J.GieserT. (Eds.). (2012). Handbook of dialogical self theory. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
27.
HermansH. J.Hermans-KonopkaA. (2010). Dialogical self theory: Positioning and counter-positioning in a globalizing society. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
28.
HermansH. J.KempenH. J. (1993). The dialogical self: Meaning as movement. San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
29.
HollwayW. (1984). Gender differences and the production of subjectivity. In HenricksJ.HollwayW.UrwinC.VennC.WalkerdineV. (Eds.), Changing the subject: Psychology, social regulation and subjectivity (pp. 223–261). London, UK: Methuen.
JamesW. (1890). The principles of psychology (Vol. 1). London, UK: Macmillan.
32.
KleinM. (1959). Our adult world and its roots in infancy. Human Relations, 12(29), 1–303.
33.
LarrainA.HayeA. (2012). The discursive nature of inner speech. Theory & Psychology, 22, 3–22. doi:10.1177/0959354311423864
34.
MarkováI. (2003). Dialogicality and social representations. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
35.
MarkováI. (2006). On the inner alter. Journal for Dialogical Science, 1, 125–148.
36.
McAdamsD. P. (1985). Power, intimacy and the life story: Personological inquiries into identity. New York, NY: The Guilford Press.
37.
MeadG. H. (1934). Mind, self and society. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
38.
MoghaddamF. (1999). Reflexive positioning: Culture and private discourse. In HarréR.Van LangenhoveL. (Eds.), Positioning theory (pp. 74–86). Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
39.
MoghaddamF.HanleyE.HarréR. (2003). Sustaining intergroup harmony: An analysis of the Kissinger papers through positioning theory. In HarréR.MoghaddamF. (Eds.), The self and others: Positioning individuals and groups in personal, political and cultural contexts (pp. 137–156). Westport, CO: Praeger.
40.
MorrisP. (Ed.). (1994). The Bakhtin reader: Selected writings of Bakhtin, Medvedev and Voloshinov. London, UK: Edward Arnold.
41.
MorsonG. S.EmersonC. (1990). Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a prosaics. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
42.
PeirceC. S. (1931–1958). The collected papers of C. S. Peirce (HartshorneC.WeissP.BurksA., Eds.; Vols I–VIII). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
43.
PotterJ.WetherallM. (1988). Social psychology and discourse. London, UK: Routledge.
44.
RaggattP. T. F. (2000). Mapping the dialogical self: Towards a rationale and method of assessment. European Journal of Personality, 14, 65–90.
45.
RaggattP. T. F. (2006). Multiplicity and conflict in the dialogical self: A life-narrative approach. In McAdamsD. P.JosselsonR.LieblichA. (Eds.), Identity and story: The narrative construction of the self (pp. 15–35). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association Press.
46.
RaggattP. T. F. (2007). Forms of positioning in the dialogical self: A system of classification and the strange case of Dame Edna Everage. Theory & Psychology, 17, 355–383. doi:10.1177/0959354307077288
47.
RaggattP. T. F. (2010). The dialogical self and Thirdness: A semiotic approach to positioning using dialogical triads. Theory & Psychology, 20, 400–419. doi:10.1177/0959354310364878
48.
RaggattP. T. F. (2012a). Personal chronotopes in the dialogical self: A developmental case study. In BertauM-C.GoncalvesM.RaggattP. T. F. (Eds.), Dialogical formations: Investigations into the origins and development of the dialogical self (pp. 235–251). Charlotte, NC: Information Age.
49.
RaggattP. T. F. (2012b). Positioning in the dialogical self: Recent advances in theory construction. In HermansH. J. M.GieserT. (Eds.), Handbook of dialogical self theory (pp. 29–45). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
50.
RaggattP. T. F. (2014). The dialogical self as a time–space matrix: Personal chronotopes and ambiguous signifiers. New Ideas in Psychology, 32, 107–114.
51.
RaggattP. T. F.WeatherlyT. (2015). Has average Joe got inner conflicts? Positioning the self and the meaning of mid-range scores on the Big Five traits. Journal of Constructivist Psychology, 28(2), 152–165. doi:10.1080/10720537.2013.877364
52.
SarbinT. R. (1986). The narrative as a root metaphor for psychology. In SarbinT. R. (Ed.), Narrative psychology: The storied nature of human conduct (pp. 3–21). New York, NY: Praeger.
53.
SchankR. C.AbelsonR. P. (1977). Scripts, plans, goals and understanding. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
54.
ShotterJ. (1993). Conversational realities: Constructing life through language. London, UK: Sage.
55.
SlocumN.HarréR. (2003). Disputes as complex social events: On the uses of positioning theory. In HarréR.MoghaddamF. (Eds.), The self and others, Positioning individuals and groups in personal, political and cultural contexts (pp. 123–136), Westport, CO: Praeger.
56.
StamH. J. (2003). Addressing oneself as another: Dialogue and the self in Habermas and Butler. In GrantC. B. (Ed.), Rethinking communicative interaction: New interdisciplinary horizons (pp. 87–100). Amsterdam, the Netherlands: John Benjamins.
57.
VološinovV. N. (1973). Marxism and the philosophy of language (MatejkaL.TitunikI. R., Trans.). New York, NY: Seminar. (Original work published 1929)
58.
VygotskyL. S. (1999). Consciousness as a problem in the psychology of behavior. In VeresovN. (Ed.), Undiscovered Vygotsky (pp. 256–281). Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Peter Lang. (Original work published 1925)
59.
WallaceD. F. (2012). The pale king. Melbourne, Australia: Penguin.
60.
WetherallM. (2003). Paranoia, ambivalence and discursive practices: Concepts of position and positioning in psychoanalysis and discursive psychology. In HarréR.MoghaddamF. (Eds.), The self and others: Positioning individuals and groups in personal, political and cultural contexts (pp. 99–120), Westport, CO: Praeger.
61.
WileyN. (2006). Inner speech as a language: A Saussurean inquiry. Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior, 36, 319–341.
62.
WinnicottD. W. (1975). Collected papers. London, UK: Karnac Books.
