Megismerhető diskurzusok. Diszkurzív pszichológia, kognitív tudomány és az elbeszélés nehézségei
Discourses Made Subject to Cognition: Discursive Psychology, Cognitive Science and the Difficulties of Narration

Summary/Abstract: From the 80s onwards, parallel to the so-called „second” cognitive revolution, cognitivism has become subject to increasing criticism. One of the most prominent criticisms has been and continues to be formulated today by the discursive psychology (DP) approach, which has emerged in the early 90s, associated with Derek Edwards and Jonathan Potter. In my paper, through the close reading and analysis of these two „founding fathers”, I wish to explore the cognitivism-criticism of the DP, and contrast its key arguments with the main tenets of the last twenty year’s post-Cartesian cognitive approach. According to the DP’s criticism the cognitive paradigm is asocial, ignores action, and is excessively abstract and representationist. These accusations might have been true for the Chomskyan cognitivism, however, by no means do they apply to theories emphasizing social cognition. My main conclusion is that DP builds the rhetoric of its constructivism-criticism on a metonymic form constructed in a synecdoche-like fashion. It questions the legitimacy of today’s cognitivism by criticising the theoretical starting point of the classical Cartesian cognitivism, ignoring the post-Cartesian changes that have taken place in cognitive science in the last twenty years. Through the analysis of the DP’s cognitivism-criticism, I hope to show—if the reconstruction succeeds—not only the disciplinary and rhetorical relations between the DP’s thesis and those of cognitive science, but also more general characteristics of the legitimising strategies used in the discourses of social scientific debates.

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