Abigail Locke

Bill and Monica: Memory, emotion and normativity in Clinton's Grand Jury testimony

We examine links between factual recall, emotion and constructions of normativity in narrative accounts, using as an empirical case President Clintons descriptions of his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. We analyse those accounts in the sequences of talk in which they occurred, under Grand Jury cross-examination. Clintons accounts of Lewinsky were part of how he attended to issues alive in court concerning himself, including his possible exploitation and abuse of power in an asymmetrical relationship; his motives, sincerity, credibility and intentions; and, indirectly, his fitness for office as President. Analysis focuses on how Clintons portrayal of Lewinsky accomplished a reflexive portrayal of himself, not as mendacious and exploitative, but as caring, responsible, sincere, rational and consistent, while reducing the scope and implications of their admitted sexual relationship. This study is linked to a broader discursive psychology of factual description, memory, mental and emotional states, and their relevance to the larger business of institutional settings.

Trying similarity, doing difference: The role of interviewer self-disclosure in interview talk with young people

Advocates of semi-structured interview techniques have often argued that rapport may be built, and power inequalities between interviewer and respondent counteracted, by strategic self-disclosure on the part of the interviewer. Strategies that use self-disclosure to construct similarity between interviewer and respondent rely on the presumption that the respondent will in fact interpret the interviewers behaviour in this way. In this article we examine the role of interviewer self-disclosure using data drawn from three projects involving interviews with young people. We consider how an interviewers attempts to ‘do similarity’ may be interpreted variously as displays of similarity or, ironically, as indicators of difference by the participant, and map the implications that this may have for subsequent interview dialogue. A particular object of concern relates to the ways in which self-disclosing acts may function in the negotiation of category entitlement within interview interactions.

Accounting for Success and Failure: A Discursive Psychological Approach to Sport Talk

In recent years, constructionist methodologies such as discursive psychology (Edwards & Potter, 1992) have begun to be used in sport research. This paper provides a practical guide to applying a discursive psychological approach to sport data. It discusses the assumptions and principles of discursive psychology and outlines the stages of a discursive study from choice of data through to transcription and analysis. Finally, the paper demonstrates a discursive psychological analysis on sport data where athletes are accounting for success and failure in competition. The analysis demonstrates that for both success and failure, there is an apparent dilution of personal agency, to either maintain their modesty in the case of success or to manage blame when talking about failure. It is concluded that discursive psychology has much to offer sport research as it provides a methodology for in-depth studies of supporting interactions.

Risky Business: Constructing the ‘choice’ to ‘delay’ motherhood in the British press

Over the last few decades the number of women becoming pregnant later on in life has markedly increased. Medical experts have raised concerns about the increase in the number of women having babies later, owing to evidence that suggests that advancing maternal age is associated with both a decline in fertility and an increase in health risks to both mother and baby. In recognition of these risks, experts have warned that women should aim to have their children between the ages of twenty and thirty-five. As a consequence, women giving birth past the age of thirty-five have typically been positioned as “older mothers.” In this paper we used a social constructionist thematic analysis in order to analyse how “older mothers” are represented in newspaper articles in the British press. We examined how the topics of “choice” and “risk” are handled in discussions of delayed motherhood, and found that the media position women as wholly responsible for choosing the timing of pregnancy and, as a consequence, as accountable for the associated risks. Moreover, we noted that newspapers also constructed a “right” time for women to become pregnant. As such, we discuss the implications for the ability of women to make real choices surrounding the timing of pregnancy.

'Natural versus Taught' : Competing Discourses in Antenatal Breastfeeding Workshops

This article is an analysis of talk in breastfeeding workshops that are part of National Childbirth Trust antenatal classes. Using audio-recordings from breastfeeding workshops antenatal classes, the data were analysed using a qualitative, discursive methodology based in part on the premises outlined by Potter and Wetherell (1987) and Edwards and Potter (1992, 2001). The analysis demonstrates how there are two main discourses of breastfeeding constructed by the breastfeeding counsellor—breastfeeding as natural, and breastfeeding as learnt. In particular, it notes how these two main discourses of breastfeeding that are seemingly in competition with one another, operate concurrently within the teaching of breastfeeding, and enable the breastfeeding counsellor to manage issues and concerns around breastfeeding.

Managing Agency for Athletic Performance: A Discursive Approach to the Zone

This paper provides a discursive perspective on a concept used within sport psychology, in both its academic and practical discourse, namely ‘the zone.’ This extraordinary state is one of exceptional peak performance whereby an athlete claims to perform effortlessly, automatically, and successfully. The focus of this paper is the use of the zone as a discursive resource in accounting for successful performance. Through the examination of two televised accounts of performance by elite athletes, I argue that the zone can be used as a way of managing agency for a performance for diluting or softening accounts of success, or as a way of claiming success was probable when failing due to injury. The paper proposes a number of rhetorical contrasts that are evident in the discursive deployment of the zone.

‘We thought if it’s going to take two years then we need to start that now’: age, infertility risk and the timing of pregnancy in older first-time mothers

Over the past few decades, the number of women having their first babies over the age of 35 in most developed societies has steadily increased. Concerns have been raised over this trend amidst warnings of both the increased risk of fertility problems and health risks to mother and child. Despite this, research into the timing of pregnancy in the context of decreasing fertility has been somewhat neglected, with research typically framed in biomedical rather than social terms. However, this area merits closer attention, given the contradictory nature of societal messages that simultaneously encourage women to pursue careers and enhance lifestyle, whilst warning of ‘risks’ of infertility and problems in ‘delaying’ motherhood. This article is based on a small-scale qualitative study that uses data drawn from 11 in-depth interviews with ‘older mothers’ about their transition to motherhood. The data were thematically analysed. We found that the women drew upon risk discourses around decreasing fertility and advancing maternal age, and that these discourses impacted on their decisions about the timing of their pregnancies. Some mothers felt that they started trying to conceive at ‘non-ideal’ times, owing to the expectations they held about decreasing fertility. We suggest that the impact of contradictory societal messages around the timing of motherhood need to be more clearly considered for their potential effects on the timing of pregnancy and note how this topic brings the personal, and, by implication, the societal, into conflict with the (narrated) biological.

‘Am I doing enough to help them?’ Learners, care work and well‐being: Further Education trainee teachers

This article draws on a small‐scale case study of English pre‐ and in‐service Further Education (FE) trainee teachers from a northern university. It explores their understanding of notions of well‐being and health. In particular, it examines trainees’ orientation to care as well as their constructions of learners. It analyses two contradictory but overlapping discourses, one that constructs learners as in need of care and support whilst the other utilises a ‘pathological’ model. This is followed by an analysis of the labour process within Further Education and the emotional labour involved in supporting students as well as meeting the range of demands faced by those working in the sector. Whilst the trainees reflect models of the dual and learning professional characteristic of teachers in the sector, marked by an expanded professionalism, they have as yet not developed a fully politicised notion of teaching.

'Golden Age' versus 'Bad Old Days': A Discursive Examination of Advice Giving in Antenatal Classes

Childbirth is seen as a medical event, and pregnancy, a time when parents-to-be are in need of advice. This article provides a discursive analysis of how such advice is given in antenatal classes. Using audio-recorded data from National Childbirth Trust (NCT) antenatal classes, we analyse how class leaders talk to class members about pregnancy, childbirth and infant care. We identify a pattern of advice giving in which class leaders construct ‘golden age’ or ‘bad old days’ stories variably to contrast the practices of the past (‘then’) with current practices (‘now’). These contrasting repertoires operate against a backdrop of medicalization and societal expectations that are both current and out-dated, providing a constitutive framework to support class leaders’ evaluations and advice on pregnancy, childbirth and infant care.

Understanding process and context in breastfeeding support interventions: The potential of qualitative research

Considerable effort has been made in recent years to gain a better understanding of the effectiveness of different interventions for supporting breastfeeding. However, research has tended to focus primarily on measuring outcomes and has paid comparatively little attention to the relational, organizational, and wider contextual processes that may impact delivery of an intervention. Supporting a woman with breastfeeding is an interpersonal encounter that may play out differently in different contexts, despite the apparently consistent aims and structure of an intervention. We consider the limitations of randomized controlled trials for building understanding of the ways in which different components of an intervention may impact breastfeeding women and how the messages conveyed through interactions with breastfeeding supporters might be received. We argue that qualitative methods are ideally suited to understanding psychosocial processes within breastfeeding interventions and have been underused. After briefly reviewing qualitative research to date into experiences of receiving and delivering breastfeeding support, we discuss the potential of theoretically informed qualitative methodologies to provide fuller understanding of intervention processes by focusing on three examples: phenomenology, ethnography, and discourse analysis. The paper concludes by noting some of the epistemological differences between the broadly positivist approach of trials and qualitative methodologies, and we suggest there is a need for further dialog as to how researchers might bridge these differences in order to develop a fuller and more holistic understanding of how best to support breastfeeding women.