One of my passions at the moment is finding out more about Discourse Analysis and considering how it can be used in the commercial sphere. One topic from DA that has really caught my eye is Discursive Psychology, which asks questions so profound that they could change the way we thing about the mind and about the way we think about brand management, marketing, and market research. Below is a snippet from a project I am working on.
Discursive Psychology
Discursive Psychology asks a question so bold as to be almost subversive! What if the neuroscientists and cognitive psychologists are looking in the wrong place when they are looking for phenomena such as attitudes and memory? What if these phenomena exist not in the head but in the discourse between people? It is important to note, from a commercial perspective, that it is not necessary to completely accept the argument of Discursive Psychology to realise that this alternative view potentially opens up new insights and opportunities.
To over simplify the argument, for reasons of clarity and brevity, Discursive Psychology is suggesting that traditional psychology uses what people say to guess what is going on in the mind. Discursive Psychology dismisses this as currently impossible and possibly misguided, preferring to categorise and study what people say as phenomena in their own right.
What is Thinking?
There is a common, but Discourse Analysis would say misguided, view that thinking and communicating start with some amorphous ideas in our mind for which we find the right words, which we then articulate, and where the listener decodes these words back into the own amorphous thoughts – this is very much the structuralist view associated with people like Saussure. However, Wittgenstein (1958) posed the thought that “the experience of thinking may just be the experience of saying”, i.e. that when we think we normally think in words. Wittgenstein suggests that if we explore how we think about things we may well find it is analogous to talking to ourselves, in our heads.
For most people it is easy to highlight some situations where thinking is not done in words, for example if you were trying to think about how you tie a tie you are likely to envisage it in either pictures or by trying to recreate the hand and arm movements. But if you try to think about why you wear a tie, you are likely to find words running through your inner voice.
This view of thinking is linked to the view that if you can’t say it then it is hard to think it, which is one of the reasons that many people advocate the practice that has become pejoratively known as political correctness. For example, if homophobic language is not available to people it will be harder for them to think homophobically. The same idea is explored, less positively, in
George Orwells’s 1984, where Newspeak is engineered to produce compliance by the population and adherence to Big Brother.
In a similar way, Professor VS Ramachandran, sees the use of metaphor as potentially one of the essential things that allowed humans to develop from a more primitive stage. The metaphor provides a mechanism to start a discourse about something that had previously not been articulated.
In terms of brands and services, examples of creating language to facilitate thought abound, for example, lien, loan, mortgage, debt, interest, premium, APR, surety, deposit, and overdraft all help facilitate the discussion, thought, and marketing of financial products and services. Similarly, the introduction of phrases such as junk bond, sub-prime, negative equity, and over-extended allow the negative side of financial products and services to be thought of and spoken about in more detail and with greater precision. The use of metaphor is frequently used to position or re-position an idea or service, for example the micro-payment service Venmo use the metaphor “It’s like your phone and wallet had a baby” to help people envisage their product.
Attitudes
Traditional psychology makes much use of the concept of attitudes, for example describing them as “an enduring organizational, motivational, emotional, perceptual, and cognitive process with respect to some aspect of an individual’s world” (Crutchfield & Krech, 1948). Because attitudes are thought to reside in the mind and to be of such importance, researchers seek to measure them via a variety of scales and techniques.
However, most researchers are all too familiar with the effect of framing and anchoring in asking attitude scale questions. As the framing and anchoring changes, so do the responses. Surely, if attitudes were the essential element that traditional models imply they would not be so unstable when researchers try to measure them? Even more worrying is the propensity of subjects to express contradictory views. For example, in February 2011 YouGov reported that 25% of UK citizens agreed with a scale that said “As long as they are peaceful people should not be prosecuted for making a protest, even if their views are extreme and likely to offend many people.” However, 82% of the same respondents in the same survey agreed with the prosecution of Emdadur Choudhury who burned poppies on a protest on Armistice Day 2010.
Discursive Psychology that highlights so called common-sense is seen as essential to negotiating a social world, acting as a lubricant of interactions. However, the robustness of common-sense is that it is built upon contradictory pairs, for example:
‘Many hands make light’ work and ‘Too many cooks spoil the broth’.
‘Knowledge is power’ and ‘Ignorance is bliss’.
‘Look before you leap’ and ‘He who hesitates is lost’.
‘Clothes make the man’ and ‘Never judge a book by its cover’.
An alternative model for attitudes is that people carry a sort of portmanteau of responses to all of the situations that they are likely to encounter. The way these responses are selected and utilised was foreshadowed by Wittgenstein’s language games and Austin’s speech acts, and the way that the portmanteau is filled may well fit the models described by Foucault and Bakhtin.
In the commercial world this view fits well with the traditional view that brands have personalities, that products are seen to convey characteristics (think rugged LandRover, versus sexist Lynx, versus caring Dove). Clearly, if brands have personalities, views, and attitudes, these will not be found in the ‘mind’ but may be studied in discourse.
Memory
Much of the ‘science’ of memory looks at concepts such as MOPs (Memory Organisation Packets) which can be described but which are hard to put under the microscope. But others (e.g. Halbwachs, 1980) have argued that memory is essentially social (or at least a significant component of it is social). Putting together the observations of Wittgenstein (thinking is speaking) and Bakhtin (everything that is said is in response to something that was said before), suggests a model where memories are (in many cases) words and that these words have been negotiated and shared with others.
If we think of a mother and child sitting together looking at a family photo album we can see shared memories being created. Similarly, the night after a party, especially with aid of Facebook, the events of the previous 24 hours are often negotiated as people fill in different details. In a group discussion situation, a negative person can facilitate the other group members in recalling their negative ‘feelings’ and may actually create new negative, shared memories.
This shared, negotiated memory is one of the reasons that word of mouth is so powerful in markets, it does not just pass information from person-to-person, it changes and creates memories, which is why Fred Reichheld makes so much of promoters and detractors in the context of his Net Promoter Score, and why Rijn Vogelaar (2010) highlights the role of Superpromoters (and their negative opposite). Many people can ‘remember’ that Volvo is safe, that Bose speakers are clear, and that Belgian chocolate tastes good without ever conducting their own trials and experiences.
I will be presenting a paper on Discourse Analysis and market research at the Merlien Qualitative Consumer Research and Insights 2011 Conference in Malta (April 7-8) and I have started a LinkedIn discussion on DA in the NewMR group.
I would love to hear your thoughts. Do you think that Discursive Psychology may be saying something interesting to us? And, if so, what?
