Social Representations & Discursive Psychology – from Cognition

This article compares and contrasts the way a set of fundamental issues are treated in social representations theory and discursive psychology. These are: action, representation, communication, cognition, construction, epistemology and method. In each case we indicate arguments for the discursive psychological treatment. These arguments are then developed and illustrated through a discussion of Wagner et al. 1999 which highlights in particular the way the analysis fails to address the activities done by people when they are producing representations, and the epistemological troubles that arise from failing to address the role of the researcher’s own representations.