An Examination of the Discursive Devices Employed in Fact Construction A Discourse Analysis of Ghost Stories

An Examination of the Discursive Devices Employed in Fact Construction: A Discourse Analysis of Ghost Stories Name – Timothy Reese Supervisor – Dr Peter Lamont Abstract The current study examines the discursive strategies that are used when people attempt to establish an account as factual This is examined with particular reference to accounts that orientate around paranormal phenomena, and builds on previous research in this area (Wooffitt, 1992: Wooffitt & Allistone, 2005: Lamont, 2007) by examining accounts of ostensible ghost encounters A discursive strategy of ‘disaffirming the stereotype’ is identified, whereby writers tend to emphasise either aspects of the surroundings, the ghost, or their emotional state, during their account, which are at odds with what can be thought of as a stereotypical ghost story A stereotypical ghost story can be considered one whereby events occur during the night, where an anxious individual, primed by eerie surroundings, believes they have seen or heard a ghost, and subsequently becomes frightened It is argued that disaffirming the stereotypical ghost story is designed to serve two functions; firstly it is designed to disassociate the writer’s account from the easily debunked stereotype, and secondly it is designed to create a sense of saliency, which makes the account more memorable via the Von Restorff effect In addition methodological issues concerning discourse analysis and parapsychology are discussed Introduction Discourse Analysis & Fact Construction Discourse is an ambiguous term (van Dijk, 1997) but can loosely be defined as a continuous stretch of language containing more than one sentence, which can occur in either conversational or narrative form (Blackburn, 1994) In turn discourse analysis (DA) can be defined as a method of qualitative research devoted to understanding all forms of spoken interaction and written text (Colman, 2001) DA is qualitative in that it does not focus on numerical data, rather the data which it focuses on is language itself Therefore in order to understand DA and its critical perspective, it is first necessary to understand DA’s stance towards language According to Bhatia et al (2008) there are two crucial factors that dissociate DA from other lines of linguistic analysis Firstly DA emphasises that language can be analysed on the level of the text, as well as at a structural level, i.e the broader semantic meaning of a text can be analysed, as well as finer grained details such as syntax and phonetics Secondly DA emphasises that language ought to be considered as a tool for social action, and is not merely a passive referential medium through which we reflect the state of the world The origins of this view of language are perhaps best traced back to Ludwig Wittgenstein’s influential ‘Philosophical Investigations’ where he stated that language can be conceived of as a series of games in which people are competing to construct different versions of reality, which ought to be beneficial to the speaker or writer in one way or another In other words Wittgenstein highlighted that language can be used to manipulate reality as opposed to merely reflect it At first this may not seem a particularly radical claim, as the potential of language to manipulate has long been known, the teaching of rhetoric for example, the art of using language to persuade or influence others, can be traced back to medieval universities (Blackburn, 1994) However, DA argues that all discourse are socially orientated this way, and, as noted by Austin (1962), the distinction between discourses that ‘do things’, and discourses that merely ‘state things’ is redundant In its relatively brief history DA has been incorporated into a number of different disciplines, using different approaches, and has focused on different kinds of data The study of DA within psychology (discursive psychology) has built upon early work from conversation analysis (CA), and has focused on how mental states, social events, and material objects are established in discourse (Bhatia et al, 2008) CA is a field of study that is concerned with the norms that underlie the organization all forms of verbal social interaction, ranging from everyday interactions between friends to quite ‘monologic’ forms of interaction (e.g speech making), and asserts that interaction is both highly organised and orderly (Drew & Curl, 2008) The present study focuses on the process of fact construction in discourse This has been examined by various researchers (e.g Gilbert & Mulkay, 1984; Potter & Edwards, 1990; Smith, 1990; Wooffitt, 1992; Collins & Pinch, 1993; Lamont, 2007), and focuses on the discursive devices that people employ in their attempts to establish their version of a contentious issues as factual A discursive device can be defined as any phrase or feature of a discourse that is intended to influence the nature of an interaction or account in favour of the speaker or writer In the process of fact construction discursive devices are used in the hope that they will help to establish the factual nature of the speaker or writer’s account Potter (1996) provides a comprehensive review of the discursive devices used in the process of fact construction, and claims that there are two main strategies which can be employed to help establish the facticity of an account; firstly the speaker or writer needs to establish that they are a reliable source of information, and secondly they need to establish that the incident which the account revolves around occurred independently of them Broadly speaking establishing that the speaker or writer is a reliable source of information can be done in three ways; by emphasising that they are of sound mind, by emphasising that that they are an expert in the particular field at hand, or by establishing that they have no motivation to lie The first two factors can be accomplished by the discursive device of category entitlement Category entitlement is a strategy that plays upon the belief that certain categories of people are entitled to have more or less reliable knowledge about a certain issue than most people Anyone belonging to the category ‘psychologists’ for example, is by expected many people to have reliable knowledge about body language, and therefore in an account about body language it may be beneficial for the speaker or writer to align them self with the category psychologist Conversely there are also categories that speakers or writers should attempt to distance themselves from, for example ‘wishful-thinking’ or ‘not of sound mind’, as their accounts may be undermined by association with these categories The third factor can be established using the discursive device of stake inoculation The concept of stake inoculation is perhaps best understood by considering what Edwards & Potter (1992) refer to as the ‘dilemma of stake’, the dilemma being that any account can be undermined as a product of the speaker or writer’s stake or self interest Stake inoculation negates this criticism by explicitly stating that the account is not driven by such motivations, for example, “the prosecution witnesses, many of them passers-by with no conceivable axe to grind, were articulate and plausible” (Potter, 1996: p.110) In the preceding example the emphasis of the witnesses as having “no conceivable axe to grind” is designed to highlight the objectivity of the witnesses and their accounts, emphasising that they are not products of stake The second broad strategy that the producer of an account may employ to establish the factual nature of an account is to establish that the events which the account orientates around occurred independently of the speaker or writer Potter (1996) identified three strategies for achieving this; empiricist discourse, corroboration, and vivid detail Empiricist discourse makes use of what has come to be known as empiricist repertoire This is a style of discourse first identified by Gilbert & Mulkay (1984) in their study of scientific disputes, which minimises the involvement of the producer of the account and instead treats data as the primary actor This is largely accomplished through a grammatical strategy, whereby verbs that are usually applied to human action are in fact applied to the data, for example, “the data implies that…” Corroboration is a very persuasive strategy as it suggests that an account is not simply a lie or a figment of the producer’s imagination This does not rule out the possibility of collusion however, but the probability of collusion is usually considered highly unlikely, and therefore the probability of a corroborated account being untrue is far less likely than an uncorroborated account The use of vivid detail in accounts is intended to prove that the producer was present, as only a genuine observer will have been able to capture the particulars of a scene So far the nature of DA and its role in fact construction have been discussed However in order to appreciate the significance of the phrase ‘fact construction’, it is necessary to understand DA’s social constructionist stance towards reality, as facts are statements that ostensibly reflect reality Discourse & Reality “When Mr N N dies one says that the bearer of the name dies, not that the meaning dies” (Wittgenstein, 1953: p.20) This quote eloquently draws attention to what Potter (1996) refers to as the ‘interactional space’ between discourse and reality Reality is an ambiguous term, but can simply be defined as “that which there is” (Blackburn, 1994: p.320) However the reason that reality is an ambiguous term is that there is disagreement as to what ‘is’ and ‘is not’, for example whether or not numbers or colours should be included is disputed (Blackburn, 1994) Parker (1992) makes a useful distinction between three different levels of reality, or as he phrases them object statuses He named these; ontological object status, epistemological object status, and moral/political object status Ontological status refers to an object’s physiology and may be considered the commonsensical notion of reality, e.g the physical entity that we might use the word ‘chair’ to refer to Epistemological status refers to the meaningful status that an object acquires through discourse, e.g the status that an object acquires after it is denoted as belonging to the category chair Lastly moral/political status refers to conceptual objects that have epistemological status but no ontological status, and therefore can be called into being, e.g attitudes or intelligence DA can be considered a methodology which falls under the wider ideological sphere of social constructionism Burr (1995) claimed that it is impossible to define social constructionism per se, but that any epistemological approach which adopts one or more of the following characteristics at its basis could be considered social constructionism; a critical stance towards taken-for-granted knowledge, the view that the way we understand the world is culturally and historically specific, the view that knowledge is sustained by social processes, and that descriptions (constructions of the world) encourage some social actions, and discourage others “The major thrust of social constructionism is the claim that human beings, and all the other ‘things’ consciously present to us, are socially, and discursively produced” (Burr, 1995: p.89) This is well illustrated by an example first brought to light by Ferdinand de Saussure (Potter, 1996) De Saussure claimed that objects derive their meaning from comparisons with other similar objects, rather than reflecting a natural order of the world For example he cited the English word ‘river’ as deriving its meaning from contrasts with alternatives such as ‘stream’ Here the distinction is clearly a size based one However in French a different distinction is made between a ‘fleuve’, which flows into the sea, and a ‘rivière’, which flows into a lake or river The point is that the concepts of ‘river’ and ‘stream’ are not a naturally occurring phenomena waiting to be realised and reflected in language In fact these different concepts (‘river’, ‘stream, ‘fleuve’ and ‘rivière’) were constructed, and are maintained by different societies on the basis of the differing comparisons that are made during verbal social interactions, these objects therefore are discursively produced It is important to emphasise that when social constructionists claim that objects are discursively produced and maintained, they are not claiming that an object’s ontological status is socially produced, but that it’s epistemological and moral/political statuses are In the past social constructionism has been criticised (e.g Nightingale & Cromby, 1999) as people have wrongly ascribed it as an ontological theory However as Edley (2001) notes “it is actually very difficult to find occasions where social constructionists have explicitly denied the existence of an extradiscursive realm….it is an opinion that others (i.e realists) have attributed to them.” (p.437) In conclusion DA views Parker’s (1992) epistemological and moral/political realms of reality as socially constructed and maintained phenomena This has significant implications for the issue of fact construction as facts are presented within these realms and consequentially must be constructions themselves Therefore it is the role of DA to identify the discursive devices that are used in the construction, maintenance and deconstruction, of ostensible facts Relevance of DA to Mainstream Psychology The most significant factor concerning DA and mainstream psychology is that DA challenges the assumptions that underpin cognitivism Cognitivism can be defined as a positivist theoretical approach, which claims that all aspects of the mind and behaviour can theoretically become fully explained through observation and experimentation According to cognitivism mental activity is the process of acquiring and processing information, performed by discrete mental entities, and is normally conceptualised in terms of rules and representations, defined in symbolic or propositional form (Still & Costall, 1991) Behaviour is seen by cognitivism as the output of these information processing systems In the latter half of the twentieth century cognitivism replaced behaviourism as the dominant influence in mainstream psychology, and remains a highly influential theory for a large amount of current research Therefore any theory that stands to undermine cognitivism has potentially detrimental consequences for much contemporary psychological research In a review by Edwards and Potter (1992) both cognitivism and psychology’s reliance on cognitivism as an all explaining theory were heavily criticized (cited Willig, 2001) These critiques can be summarised into five unfounded assumptions that cognitivism makes, which will now be examined in turn: i) Firstly cognitivism assumes that talk about people’s beliefs and attitudes can be used as a direct route to their cognitions However, as discussed in the first section of the introduction, talk cannot be considered to be an accurate reflection of what people are actually thinking, as socially orientated ii) Cognitivism also assumes that cognitions are based on perceptions, i.e that cognitions are representations of real objects that occur in the world However DA argues that objects themselves are constructed, at least on an epistemological level through language Consequentially rather than objects giving rise to cognitions, DA argues that it is discourse and social interactions that give rise to objects as we are capable of thinking of them, hence language itself should be the focal point of research iii) Thirdly cognitivism assumes that an objective perception of reality, upon which cognitions are based, is theoretically possible, and that resource saving heuristics account for the differences between people’s perceptions However if, as DA states, language constructs reality rather than reflecting it, there cannot possibly be an objective perception of reality as each individual constructs their own unique version of reality iv) Furthermore cognitivism assumes that the events and objects, which people form their attitudes towards, are one and the same However, DA states that all events and objects are relative to the individual Therefore differences in expressed attitude towards what is ontologically the same object or event can be attributed to the fact that people are forming attitudes towards epistemologically different objects or events, rather than the difference being due to fundamental differences between the individuals For example the defendant’s perception of a court case will vary greatly from the victim’s perception of the same case v) Finally, cognitivism assumes that our cognitions are relatively enduring, stable, and therefore predictable However DA’s interpretation of language highlights the importance of the social context in which accounts are given DA argues that the same person may well express significantly different attitudes about the same issue surroundings, the ghost, or the emotional state of the writer, and can be found in all the varieties of ghost stories that Rae-Ellis delineated In one example the author goes to great lengths to describe what some might consider an almost utopian summer’s day before describing an experience of being possessed later that evening whilst driving: “The day was beautiful Vivian and I started out for East Woodburn in the highest of spirits It is always nice to get out of the ‘brick jungle’ and out into the country Our route took us over the Whannie Moors Clouds were scudding across a blue sky and all was right with the world We arrived at East Woodburn full of the joys of life After being entertained by a dear old lady of eighty-eight we went along to see the village show Set out in the village hall were all the exhibits on which much love and care had been lavished: leeks looking more like ship’s masts, carrots of immense proportions, flowers lovingly arranged, jams and cakes displayed with pride Children were running round, parents greeting one another, the vicar beaming proudly, and outside the local men were throwing horse shoes over a stick in a sort of quoits game.” (p.136) What is interesting is that her activities during the day, and the nature of the day itself, should have no real bearing on events that happened later that evening, yet they are described in considerable detail at the beginning of the account, setting a scene which seems at odds with the nature of the rest of the account As is to be expected the nature of the ghosts, both physiological and character based, are mentioned in virtually all the accounts The stereotypical expectation of a 22 ghost is usually a wispy vague figure, intent on terrifying unsuspecting mortals, as noted by Brian Inglis in the introduction: “The mind’s eye picture of a ghost for most of us is a transparent wraith, floating around…But this type, though occasionally reported, is a relative rarity More commonly apparitions, as the name implies, seem to be reel people…the wraith is generally regarded as being the earthbound spirit of someone who has died, usually a violent death….condemned to haunt” (p XVI) Here Inglis not only reaffirms the expectations that people have of ghosts, as expressed by Rae-Ellis (p IX), but also draws attention to the fact that they are expected to be malevolent, having suffered a ‘violent death’ The word ‘haunt’ is of particular significance as it orientates towards an image of victims being scared, or disturbed When one also considers that, “haunted buildings are the commonest source of ghost stories” (Rae-Ellis, 1990: p.147), it is easy to see why ghost encounters are typically thought of as frightening experiences However in many of the accounts the authors disaffirm the stereotype that ghosts are wispy and malevolent, for example: “He was leaning against the window sill and looking lovingly at the sleeping boy It only seemed to be for a second, but it was all very real and not in the least frightening.” (p.67) Here the writer highlights both the ‘very real’ and ‘loving’ nature of the ghost, who she recognised as the boy’s grandfather The writer also draws attention to the 23 fact that her experience was not ‘in the least frightening’ This disaffirms another expectation that people have of ghost stories, namely that they are scary, and that consequentially the experient finds the encounter duly frightening Again there are numerous instances in the book where writers emphasise their lack of fear during the encounter, for example: “Strangely, I felt no sense of fear, although I cannot claim to have particularly strong nerves” (p.183) In conclusion a particularly salient feature of the accounts was that the writers often emphasised aspects of their encounter that disaffirmed the stereotypical vision of a ghost encounter This was done by emphasising; aspects of the scene, aspects of the ghost or aspects of the experient’s emotional state Often these details are immaterial to the rest of the account, hence their inclusion can be considered some what illogical; therefore the reason for their inclusion justifies further examination Function of Disaffirming the Stereotype A prominent feature of the stereotypical conception that people have of ghost stories (whereby events occur in the dark, and anxious individuals primed by eerie surroundings become terrified after they believe they have seen or heard a ghost) is that an account of this nature is quite easily debunked, or at least held as contentious Darkness could quite easily be used to question what people claim to have seen, especially if they are claiming to have seen vague, wispy figures that were only briefly present If the individual was anxious it also becomes easy to claim that what they think that they saw or heard was just a product of an overly active imagination, and a reaction of terror would confirm this notion Therefore by distancing their 24 account from the easily debunked stereotype, the writer is able to resist their account being undermined This explanation as to the reason why people emphasise aspects of their encounter that disaffirm the stereotypical ghost story is in line with the philosophy of Jacques Derrida Derrida stated that the anxiety of, “being caught by the game” (Derrida, 1988: p 109), i.e creating a negative impression of oneself, leads to logical flaws in people’s accounts, as they overemphasise or ignore certain aspects of it in an attempt to quash negative inferences being made of them Therefore in the accounts at hand writers overemphasise aspects of their accounts which thwart the traditional ways that ghost stories are debunked, as they are anxious that their account may be debunked itself Another function of the disaffirmation of the stereotypical ghost story is that it gives the account a salient quality, which may have two main functions Firstly the account is less likely to be dismissed as an outright lie, because if someone were to make up a ghost story most people would expect it to follow the stereotypical format Therefore accounts that deviate from this pattern are more difficult to dismiss as lies Secondly the quality of saliency makes any object or event more memorable This is known as the Von Restorff effect, named after Hedwig Von Restorff who originally identified the effect in 1933 (Colman, 2001) In the current study the implication is that that the reader of a non-typical account is more likely dwell upon the account, as it will be less easily forgotten, and cannot merely dismiss the account out of hand The quality of saliency may also serve another selfish interest of the writer, namely that their account be remembered above others, or even that their account was more likely to be published by Rae-Ellis In conclusion the establishment of an account as non-stereotypical is designed to have two effects Firstly it attempts to distances the account from the easily 25 debunked stereotypical chain of events, and secondly it is designed to make the account in question salient from other accounts This makes the account more difficult to forget, which hinders the reader from dismissing the account out of hand without first dwelling upon it Discussion Implications of the Results The current study found that in accounts of ostensible ghost encounters, writers consistently emphasised aspects of their experiences that disassociate it from the stereotypical ghost story A stereotypical ghost story can be considered one that occurs during the night, whereby an anxious individual, primed by eerie surroundings, thinks that they have seen or heard a ghost, and subsequently becomes frightened Writers disassociate their account from the stereotypical one either by emphasising aspects of the surroundings, the ghost, or their mental state that were at odds with the stereotypical format It is argued that this is designed to perform two functions; firstly it distances the account from the easily debunked stereotype, and secondly it is intended to establish the account as salient In turn these functions make the account more likely to be considered as factual, and more difficult to be forgotten The results should be considered as a further advancement within the grander study of fact construction By applying the method of DA to the topic of fact construction it is hoped that researchers will be able to identify the discursive devices that people employ to make an account of an ambiguous event appear factual Increased knowledge about these devices should make it easier for people to assess ostensibly factual explanations of events This has the potential to be highly beneficial 26 for disciplines that attempt to discover the factual explanation for unknown occurrences or phenomena, namely; science, law and the media Weaknesses of the Current Study The current study focuses on a collection of accounts of ostensible ghost encounters from a book titled, “True Ghost Stories of Our Own Time” compiled and edited by Vivian Rae-Ellis This provides a naturally occurring data set that excludes the possibility of unaccounted for semiotic cues, most notably body language, distorting the nature of the data However, there are nevertheless features of the book which could have altered the nature of the data Firstly, and most importantly, the accounts were written by members of the public who knew that the recipient of their accounts, Rae-Ellis, was a believer in the existence of ghosts This is significant because, as noted by Potter (1996), the reason that accounts of paranormal phenomena can be beneficial to the study of fact construction, is that the speaker or writer expects the accounts to be accepted with a degree of cynicism, and therefore designs their account to resist undermining However as the writers of the accounts knew that their accounts would be received by someone who believed in ghosts, designing their accounts to resist being undermined may not have been their primary concern, therefore the discursive devices identified may have been designed for another, less obvious, purpose Secondly Rae-Ellis acknowledges in the preface that she accepted all the accounts in good faith, and “relied on the fundamental honesty of people” (p XII) Although the current study is not concerned with the ontological existence of ghosts, it may have been a confounding factor if some of the accounts were written by people who not actually believe that they have had a ghost encounter, as their motive whilst writing may purely have been to get their account published, rather than present their account as factual, and therefore they may have embellished their 27 account Finally Rae-Ellis also states in the introduction that some of the accounts have been shortened, however it is not always explicitly obvious in which accounts this has and has not occurred Shortening a text may significantly alter its nature; therefore unedited versions of the accounts may have allowed more dependable conclusions to be drawn Weaknesses of Discursive Psychology As with all methodological approaches in the social sciences DA has weaknesses as well as strengths For example the ‘frame problem’ as referred to by Still & Costall (1991) in relation to cognitivism, whereby it is not clear in which social context a rule should apply, could also be applied to DA Potter (1996) states that studies of accounts of paranormal phenomena ‘trade upon’ the scepticism with which they are commonly greeted, claiming that they are designed to resist undermining However this line of reasoning makes the assumption that the producer of the account always designs their account to resist undermining, which may not necessarily be the case For example if the producer of the account had reason to believe that the recipient of the account also believed in the particular phenomena at hand, they may in fact design their account with the primary objective of establish a bond between the themselves and the recipient According to this line of reasoning discursive devices such as vivid detail could be reinterpreted as a device designed to help the recipient of an account empathise with the speaker or writer, rather than a devise merely employed to prove that the speaker or writer was at the scene This could be achieved either by the fact that vivid descriptions allow the recipient to imagine themselves in the similar situation, or by the fact that descriptions give the speaker or writer the opportunity to express the type of personality that they wish to personify, as they can choose which aspects of the scene to describe, and what style of 28 adjectives to use Therefore one criticism of DA is that the intended function of a discursive device is highly debatable, and may vary depending on the context in which it is delivered The above criticism hints at a broader criticism of DA, namely that its view of the action orientation of language can be seen as quite one dimensional, regarding discourses as a largely machiavellian tool, whereby individuals are considered to use discourse to either establish themselves as superior, or others as inferior For example in the study of fact construction discursive devices are considered either to be designed to establish the speaker or writer’s account as factual, or undermine another person’s account as untruthful However this view of language ignores an additional, arguably more fundamental, action orientation of language, namely its ability to create and maintain relationships, as discussed by Dunbar (1997) According to this line of reasoning seemingly mundane descriptions can be considered as social tools used to encourage empathy between the speaker or writer of an account and its recipient, and consequently it may again be necessary to reconsider some of the conclusions drawn from DA For example Wooffitt (1992) noted the seemingly mundane nature of some of the actions described in the, “I was just doing X when Y” structure, which he claimed are designed to present the speaker or writer as normal However if we consider one of the examples used by Wooffitt to illustrate this point it becomes clear that it can be reinterpreted as a device intended to encourage empathy, or at least sympathy In the following example a woman is describing one of several visions she had of her husband following his death, “I was just looking at the coffin (X) and there was David standing there (Y)” (Wooffitt, 1992: p.123) Here ‘I was just looking at the coffin’ is considered as a mundane description, however it seems obvious that if this supposedly mundane description was replaced by another one, i.e 29 ‘I was just doing the washing up’ the effect of the sentence would be very different, as the description used orientates around a highly emotional action; looking at a loved ones coffin Therefore it is proposed that that the description, ‘I was just looking at the coffin’ can be reinterpreted as a discursive device designed to encourage empathy and the formation of a bond, as most people can relate to the ordeal of attending a funeral of a loved one DA’s not seem to consider this action orientation of language, and therefore could be overlooking or misidentifying important discursive devices, and as the aim of DA is to understand all forms of spoken interaction and written text (Colman, 2001), this can be considered a major methodological flaw The reason for DA’s lack of consideration for this aspect of the action orientation of language could be attributed to the fact that DA does not seem to consider language from an evolutionary perspective This lack of consideration of evolutionary theory also highlights problems with some of DA’s criticisms of cognitivism For example the second unfounded assumption of cognitivism, as noted by Willig (2001), is the claim that objects give rise to cognitions In contrast DA states that it is discourse and social interactions that give rise to objects as we are capable of thinking of them, hence language itself should be the focal point of research However it seems more likely that both these processes are occurring in parallel If we are to consider the human brain as a product of evolution, then objects must have given rise to cognitions at some stage before language evolved, and more than likely continue to so Therefore DA should view itself as a complimentary methodology to cognitivism, rather than one that stands in direct opposition to it, as both methods offer insights into the organisation of language and the organisation of the brain, the two of which are inextricably connected 30 As outlined above, another weakness of DA is the nature of its overtly critical stance towards cognitivism and mainstream psychology, as advocated by Willig (2001) For example Wooffitt (1992) criticises the cognitivist explanation for the existence of precise detail in ‘flashbulb memories’ These can be defined as vivid and detailed memories of dramatic events (Eysenck & Keane, 2000), such as the assassination of JFK, whereby people have very distinct memories of where they were and what they were doing etc at the time of the event Wooffitt (1992) claims that cognitivist psychology attributes the nature of these memories to the fact that the emotional significance of the event triggers a special neural mechanism, as originally argued by Brown & Kulik (1977) (cited Eysenck & Keane, 2000) However subsequent research (Bohannon, 1988: cited Eysenck & Keane, 2000) has demonstrated convincingly that flashbulb memories are no different to any other memory, and that they gain their vivid nature because the events which they are about tend to be of high public or personal interest As a consequence these events appear very frequently in the media, or in conversations, and are replayed frequently in the mind of the individual just after the incident, and then begin to appear less frequently as time from the event passes This process is in fact a very effective way to remember any fact or incident; very high initial exposure, followed by diminishingly frequent exposure Therefore Wooffitt’s criticism of cognitive psychology’s explanation of flashbulb memories was in fact a criticism of a dated theory that was not accepted by most cognitive psychologists at the time In addition the subsequent theory that superseded the original theory of Brown & Kulik (1977) can be seen as congruent with DA’s view of expressed memories as constructions, as it is argued that these vivid memories are also constructed on a cognitive level by post event feedback This can be seen as congruent with DA as it emphasises the constructed nature of 31 memories on a cognitive level, and highlights the significance of the discourse used about an event by the media, or peers in the construction of memories This reflects badly on DA as any methodology which stands to criticise another, as DA does to cognitivism (Willig, 2001), should be well informed of the current theories of the methodology that it is appraising In conclusion a major weakness of DA is that stipulating the function of discursive devices that are identified is highly subjective, and may be subject to the frame problem, as identified by Still & Costall (1991), whereby the function of a device may change depending on the social context in which it is delivered In addition DA fails to consider language from an evolutionary perspective Consequentially it has not paid sufficient attention to the action orientation of language in the formation and maintaining of bonds, and may have misinterpreted some discursive devices, most noticeably vivid descriptions Finally DA’s overtly critical stance towards cognitivism is unproductive and reflects badly on DA, as some of the criticisms of cognitivism are flawed Suggestions for Future Research Within parapsychology there has been a movement away from attempting to establish whether or not psi exists This is well exemplified by the research of Susan Blackmore who began her investigations into the existence of psi in the late 1970’s as an adamant believer in the existence of psi However by 1987 Blackmore submitted that due to methodological limitations, the question of whether or not psi exists is ‘unanswerable’, and by 1998 Blackmore came to the conclusion that psi most probably does not exists, and ceased her research in the field (Blackmore, 2001) The logical conclusion to the problems highlighted by Blackburn would be for parapsychology to concentrate its research onto the nature of belief and believers, as 32 these are still significant social phenomena Since research into the differences between believers and non-believers has been problematic (Wiseman & Watt, 2006), largely due to lack of an adequate method for measuring levels of paranormal belief, the current study advocates further research into the nature of accounts of belief, as there already exists a mass of readily available data in this area The study of spontaneous accounts in particular is advocated, as not only may these offer insights into the phenomenology of paranormal encounters, but also DA of these accounts may be beneficial for the broader study of fact construction and, as noted by Wooffitt & Allistone (2005), allow parapsychology to collaborate with other research areas within psychology, which may in turn encourage the acceptance of parapsychology as a science In an analogous fashion, it is recommended that discursive psychology should incorporate theories from other fields of psychology, most notably evolutionary psychology, in order to gain a better understanding of the functions that language evolved to serve, and therefore gain a better understanding of the functions of discourse 33 Bibliography Austin, J.L (1962) How to things with words Oxford: Clarendon Press 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