Discursive psychology (DP) is a form of DA focusing on the process and outcome of language, centralizing how language is tied to discursive and social practices, with certain actions/effects. The origins of DP can be traced to Potter and Wetherell’s (1987) and Edwards and Potter’s (1992) writings. These writings reworked psychology’s ‘subject matter’ (i.e., cognition, mental states) by taking them out of the head and/or mind by reconceptualizing and studying them as ‘worked’ up and given meaning in micro-talk, conversations, and discourse. Within DP, self-identity is theorized as the product of individual, social, and cultural discourses, which interact to create particular meanings and associated actions. This latter point makes DP both a theory and a methodology for studying the process, function, and implications of ‘language in use’ in relation to psychological phenomena (Wiggins, 2017).
In 2000, McGannon and Mauws introduced DP into sport and exercise psychology. Researchers in sport psychology have since used DP to investigate taken for granted forms of psychological phenomena in sport (e.g., Cosh & Tully, 2014, on student athlete’s talk about combining education and athletics; Locke, 2008, on optimal athletic performance). DP has also been advocated as useful to study the media to learn more about the socio-cultural construction of self-identity in sport and exercise psychology (McGannon & Smith, 2015). Additional DP research topics might include the role of others’ (e.g., coaches, consultants, teammates, significant others) talk in the (re)production of nuanced ways of speaking that form identities (e.g., athlete roles, limited masculine and feminine identities) and their impact on one another (i.e., how identity-talk impacts experiences and behavior).
