Carla Willig
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 377691 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Carla Willig |
| NOMBRES | Carla |
| APELLIDO | Willig |
| FIRMA | WILLIG C |
| AFILIACIONES | City, University of London |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9804-9141 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 39 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 181 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 39 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1992 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 9 |
How do research participants with age-related vision loss talk about their experiences? A secondary discourse analysis of published qualitative extracts
Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is a chronic, progressive eye condition that can affect individuals in later life and lead to loss of central visual function. In this analysis, we aimed to explore the discursive landscape of talk about AMD, drawing on extracts published in peer-reviewed qualitative studies on AMD. Drawing on procedures of qualitative meta-synthesis, we compiled a corpus of raw data extracts from 25 qualitative studies on A…
“If I don’t like it, I’ll just pop the phone down!”
The COVID-19 pandemic brought about sudden, profound shifts in working practices, including in qualitative research, where telephone or virtual interviews became necessary alternatives to face-to-face interviews given COVID-19 distancing measures. In this reflection, we discuss our group’s transition to using telephone interviews to carry out an interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) study with 18 older adults living with age-related macu…
Benefits of a dual focus methodology utilising IPA and FDA in understanding meaning-making around the experience of psychosis
A dual focus methodology combining Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) and Foucauldian Discourse Analysis (FDA) was utilised to explore both language and the subjective embodied experience of psychosis. Despite arguments that combining IPA and FDA creates epistemological/ontological conflicts due to the dissonant theoretical underpinnings, adoption of a critical realist position permitted an integration of these approaches. A combined …
Feeling at home in an experiential research group
This paper presents a set of reflections on the process of conducting a qualitative pluralistic group research project. As our work progressed, we began to spend as much time discussing this group work process as we did focusing on our specific research topic. We begin by giving some background to how we got started and the research study itself as well as saying something about who the group is. We then describe our process and examine how we ca…
Surrender to win
This article focuses on the ways in which members of Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous construct themselves as being in recovery from addiction. In this original study, data were taken from 19 participants. They were analysed using Willig’s six-stage Foucauldian discourse analytic method. This method is suited to enabling the analyst to locate discourse resources used by participants within broader, dominant, discourses, and for explor…
From revision to transformation
Surviving and thriving REF2021 for qualitative psychologists
In a 2016 issue of QMiP Bulletin (Issue 21), our current Chair, Sarah Riley, highlighted some of the particular issues faced by qualitative psychologists in relation to the Research Excellence Framework (REF). Memorably describing REF as: ‘The Voice and the Spanish Inquisition rolled into one, with a lot more meetings’, the article concludes with a promise that REF issues would be addressed at QMiP’s 2017 conference – where a REF discussion panel…
The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research in Psychology
Reflections on the use of object elicitation
Objective This paper reflects on the use of object elicitation in a phenomenological study of the experience of living with advanced cancer. Method Object elicitation was used to assist data collection by facilitating participants’ reflections on the quality and texture of their lived experience. Participants were invited to select objects that held special meaning for them during the current phase of their lives, and to reflect on their relation…
Qualitative Research
The second edition of The SAGE handbook of qualitative research in psychology provides comprehensive coverage of the qualitative methods, strategies, and research issues in psychology. Qualitative research in psychology has been transformed since the first edition's publication. Responding to this evolving field, existing chapters have been updated while three new chapters have been added on Thematic Analysis, Interpretation, and Netnography
Constructivism and ‘The Real World’
Feel the Feeling
This empirical study investigates psychological practitioners' experience of worksite training in acceptance and commitment therapy using an interpretative phenomenological analysis methodology. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight participants, and three themes emerged from the interpretative phenomenological analysis data analysis: influence of previous experiences, self and others and impact and application. The significance of…
Layering the wounded self
This paper shows how a study using a pluralistic qualitative design explored the meaning–making process taking place around repetitive self–injury. By combining three interpretative lenses (interpretative phenomenological analysis, narrative analysis and psychosocial analysis), the researchers were able to develop a rich, multi–layered understanding of one individual’s experience of the behaviour. However, the project also raised significant meth…
The personal experience of dysmenorrhoea
This study explored six women's experiences of primary dysmenorrhoea using semi-structured interviews analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis. Rather than focusing on pain, participants broadened the study focus to coping with the menstrual process as a whole. This was seen to be mediated by menstrual taboos and by the theme of 'order', arising from a strong feeling of a menstrual timetable and the need for rational explanation. A…
Cancer diagnosis as discursive capture
Unlike a Rock, a Tree, a Horse or an Angel
In this article I present some reflections on my experience of the process of wresting meaning from meaninglessness. My reflections are both personal and scholarly in that I trace my own experience of struggling with meaning-making and attempt to illuminate them with reference to published work, drawing on concepts from existentialist philosophy in particular. Much of what is contained in this article is based upon reflections recorded in my pers…
The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research in Psychology
Introducing Qualitative Research in Psychology
Carla Willig introduces students to the rationale behind qualitative research methods and provides clear guidance on how to carry out basic qualitative research. Appendices include case studies on how past students have tackled such research
A Phenomenological Investigation of the Experience of Taking Part in `Extreme Sports
This article is concerned with what it may mean to individuals to engage in practices that are physically challenging and risky. The article questions the assumptions that psychological health is commensurate with maintaining physical safety, and that risking one's health and physical safety is necessarily a sign of psychopathology. The research was based upon semi-structured interviews with eight extreme sport practitioners. The interviews were …
Older Women and Everyday Talk about the Ageing Body
This discourse analytic study shows how 10 older women, who exercise regularly or attend the University of the Third Age, adjust to the ageing body in their `everyday talk' through taking a dualist position. The part of the body which is discursively constructed as ageing becomes objectified through appealing to a wider cultural discourse of ageing as biological decline. This dualist position is embedded within a wider cultural discourse of perso…
Critical Realism in Discourse Analysis
In critical realism, language is understood as constructing our social realities. However, these constructions are theorized as being shaped by the possibilities and constraints inherent in the material world. For critical realists, material practices are given an ontological status that is independent of, but in relation with, discursive practices. The advantage in taking a critical realist, rather than relativist, approach is that analysis can …
The Case for Critical Realist Discourse Analysis as a Viable Method in Discursive Work
In this reply to Speer's response to our paper we argue that in presenting our method for doing critical realist discourse analysis (CRDA) our paper provided a systematic method from which to do CRDA that was timely, rigorous and significantly different from conversation analysis (CA) in its examination of material practices. We note that our paper addressed a methodological, not epistemological, issue and make a call for a commitment within the …
Old Clothes and an Older Look
Social cognition models (SCMs) have been described by Ingham as old clothes fit only for the jumble, yet their use in investigations of health behaviour performance in recent years has proliferated rather than declined. In a critique of the literature, this paper highlights a range of theoretical, methodological and performance-based limitations of the SCM approach and demonstrates that a ceiling has now been reached whereby more than half the va…
Reflections on the Use of a Phenomenological Method
This paper offers reflections on the use of a phenomenological method in the exploration of the experience of taking part in extreme sport. A phenomenological method was chosen in an attempt to gain some understanding of the meaning and significance of an embodied experience. The paper presents a brief account of the process and outcome of the research. This is followed by a discussion of the researcher's experience of conducting phenomenological…
The strange death of the authoritarian personality
In 1950 Adorno et al .'s The Authoritarian Personality study warned that American society contained a minority of individuals whose characters made them prone to become fascists in certain circumstances and that this was a danger common to contemporary industrial society. After early acclaim critics argued that the main threat came from left-wing authoritarian individuals. But research in several countries failed to establish their existence. We …
A Phenomenological Investigation of the Experience of Taking Part in `Extreme Sports
This article is concerned with what it may mean to individuals to engage in practices that are physically challenging and risky. The article questions the assumptions that psychological health is commensurate with maintaining physical safety, and that risking one's health and physical safety is necessarily a sign of psychopathology. The research was based upon semi-structured interviews with eight extreme sport practitioners. The interviews were …
Cancer diagnosis as discursive capture
Painting pictures of embodied experience
This paper is based upon the work of an ongoing, collective research project that is concerned with embodiment. The co-researchers have used a variety of methods, including memory work and the analysis of discourse, in order to trace the ways in which meanings are constructed and lived, with and through the body. These methods have relied solely on transcripts of text as data. Growing awareness of the limitations this imposed on the research, par…
Older Women and Everyday Talk about the Ageing Body
This discourse analytic study shows how 10 older women, who exercise regularly or attend the University of the Third Age, adjust to the ageing body in their `everyday talk' through taking a dualist position. The part of the body which is discursively constructed as ageing becomes objectified through appealing to a wider cultural discourse of ageing as biological decline. This dualist position is embedded within a wider cultural discourse of perso…
You Punched Him, didn't You
This paper explores the management in police-suspect interviews of accusations of violent involvement. Eleven officially taperecorded interviews between police and suspects were transcribed and analysed and a basic grammar of violent accusations was identified. Different ways in which accusations are warranted and contested are discussed and instantiated. It is suggested that the interview participants use two discourses of violence: disorderly a…
Constructions of Sexual Activity and Their Implications for Sexual Practice
Most sex education uses language in order to communicate its message. Discourse analytic theory suggests that far from merely transmitting factual information, language always constructs particular versions of reality. This article is concerned with discursive constructions of sexual activity and their implications for sexual practice. Data presented in this article are based on a series of semi- structured interviews with 16 heterosexual adults.…
The strange death of the authoritarian personality
In 1950 Adorno et al .'s The Authoritarian Personality study warned that American society contained a minority of individuals whose characters made them prone to become fascists in certain circumstances and that this was a danger common to contemporary industrial society. After early acclaim critics argued that the main threat came from left-wing authoritarian individuals. But research in several countries failed to establish their existence. We …
Reflections on the Use of a Phenomenological Method
This paper offers reflections on the use of a phenomenological method in the exploration of the experience of taking part in extreme sport. A phenomenological method was chosen in an attempt to gain some understanding of the meaning and significance of an embodied experience. The paper presents a brief account of the process and outcome of the research. This is followed by a discussion of the researcher's experience of conducting phenomenological…
Discourses in the European Commission’s 1996–2000 Health Promotion Programme
This article is a discourse analysis of ‘The Community Action Programme on Health Promotion, Information, Education and Training 1996–2000’. The analysis uses six stages to discourse analysis. A religious discourse is used to construct the Programme and a military discourse is used to construct its implementation. These discourses are embedded in a scientific discourse. This analysis reveals that despite rhetorical endorsement of the concept of e…
Unlike a Rock, a Tree, a Horse or an Angel
In this article I present some reflections on my experience of the process of wresting meaning from meaninglessness. My reflections are both personal and scholarly in that I trace my own experience of struggling with meaning-making and attempt to illuminate them with reference to published work, drawing on concepts from existentialist philosophy in particular. Much of what is contained in this article is based upon reflections recorded in my pers…
I wouldn't have married the guy if i'd have to do that’
The study reported in this paper uses discourse analysis to better understand heterosexual adults' accounts of condom use. It is suggested that discursive constructions of what it means to use a condom in a relationship may constrain or facilitate particular behaviours within particular contexts. Analysis of interview transcripts revealed that respondents framed their accounts of condom use almost exclusively within a marital discourse. This disc…
The strange death of the authoritarian personality
The hidden history of authoritarianism
Sanford, 1950) was described by an early reviewer as ’a landmark in the development of social psychology and personality study ’ (Smith, 1950). Its career following publication certainly bears this out. There were many
The personal experience of dysmenorrhoea
This study explored six women's experiences of primary dysmenorrhoea using semi-structured interviews analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis. Rather than focusing on pain, participants broadened the study focus to coping with the menstrual process as a whole. This was seen to be mediated by menstrual taboos and by the theme of 'order', arising from a strong feeling of a menstrual timetable and the need for rational explanation. A…
An Exploration of the Discursive Constructions used in Young Adults' Memories and Accounts of Contraception
The study reported in this article uses discourse analysis to examine the meaning and significance of contraception for young adults and emphasizes the social construction of meaning to better explain what can limit and what can facilitate use of contraception. The study used memory work (Crawford et al., Emotion and Gender: Constructing Meaning from Memories. Sage, 1992) and group discussions to collect accounts of contraception. Analysis of the…
Surrender to win
This article focuses on the ways in which members of Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous construct themselves as being in recovery from addiction. In this original study, data were taken from 19 participants. They were analysed using Willig’s six-stage Foucauldian discourse analytic method. This method is suited to enabling the analyst to locate discourse resources used by participants within broader, dominant, discourses, and for explor…
Assumptions in people's talk about Aids
Government AIDS education campaigns are based on a number of tacit assumptions. They presuppose that an increase in knowledge of HIV transmission routes will produce behaviour change in and of itself. In addition, the major slogans used in nationwide media campaigns make three further assumptions: 1. there are objective facts that are undisputably true, 2. such facts can be assessed via scientific inquiry, and 3. individual freedom of behavioural…
I wouldn't have married the guy if i'd have to do that’
The study reported in this paper uses discourse analysis to better understand heterosexual adults' accounts of condom use. It is suggested that discursive constructions of what it means to use a condom in a relationship may constrain or facilitate particular behaviours within particular contexts. Analysis of interview transcripts revealed that respondents framed their accounts of condom use almost exclusively within a marital discourse. This disc…
You Punched Him, didn't You
This paper explores the management in police-suspect interviews of accusations of violent involvement. Eleven officially taperecorded interviews between police and suspects were transcribed and analysed and a basic grammar of violent accusations was identified. Different ways in which accusations are warranted and contested are discussed and instantiated. It is suggested that the interview participants use two discourses of violence: disorderly a…
The hidden history of authoritarianism
Sanford, 1950) was described by an early reviewer as ’a landmark in the development of social psychology and personality study ’ (Smith, 1950). Its career following publication certainly bears this out. There were many
You get the nicotine and that in your blood’—constructions of addiction and control in women's accounts of cigarette smoking
In this study discourse analysis was used in order to gain a greater understanding of the multiple meanings that women smokers attach to cigarette smoking. The discursive constructions used by women to explain and justify their smoking behaviour were identified by analysing the transcripts of four semi-structured interviews. All respondents framed their accounts of cigarette smoking within a discourse of addiction, reflecting the prevalence of th…
Social Constructionism and Revolutionary Socialism
Constructions of Sexual Activity and Their Implications for Sexual Practice
Most sex education uses language in order to communicate its message. Discourse analytic theory suggests that far from merely transmitting factual information, language always constructs particular versions of reality. This article is concerned with discursive constructions of sexual activity and their implications for sexual practice. Data presented in this article are based on a series of semi- structured interviews with 16 heterosexual adults.…
An Exploration of the Discursive Constructions used in Young Adults' Memories and Accounts of Contraception
The study reported in this article uses discourse analysis to examine the meaning and significance of contraception for young adults and emphasizes the social construction of meaning to better explain what can limit and what can facilitate use of contraception. The study used memory work (Crawford et al., Emotion and Gender: Constructing Meaning from Memories. Sage, 1992) and group discussions to collect accounts of contraception. Analysis of the…
Psychology and Health Promotion
A Discourse-Dynamic Approach to the Study of Subjectivity in Health Psychology
As one of the key tools of social constructionist research, discourse analysis has allowed us to explore the ways in which `health' and `illness' are constructed through language. There are two major ways in which a Foucauldian version of discourse analysis has been applied within this context. Discourse analysis has been used to deconstruct expert discourses of health and illness (Focus 1) and to determine the extent to which dominant discourses…
The strange death of the authoritarian personality
Discourses in the European Commission’s 1996–2000 Health Promotion Programme
This article is a discourse analysis of ‘The Community Action Programme on Health Promotion, Information, Education and Training 1996–2000’. The analysis uses six stages to discourse analysis. A religious discourse is used to construct the Programme and a military discourse is used to construct its implementation. These discourses are embedded in a scientific discourse. This analysis reveals that despite rhetorical endorsement of the concept of e…
Commentaries on Hook, ‘Genealogy, discourse, ‘Effective History’
This article is one of the four commentaries published as Commentaries on Hook, ‘Genealogy, discourse, ‘Effective History’: Foucault and the work of critique’ \n in the journal, Qualitative Research in Psychology [Taylor and Francis © Edward Arnold (publishers) Ltd.]. The definitive version is available at; http://dx.doi.org/10.1191/1478088705qp026cm
Painting pictures of embodied experience
This paper is based upon the work of an ongoing, collective research project that is concerned with embodiment. The co-researchers have used a variety of methods, including memory work and the analysis of discourse, in order to trace the ways in which meanings are constructed and lived, with and through the body. These methods have relied solely on transcripts of text as data. Growing awareness of the limitations this imposed on the research, par…
Critical Realism in Discourse Analysis
In critical realism, language is understood as constructing our social realities. However, these constructions are theorized as being shaped by the possibilities and constraints inherent in the material world. For critical realists, material practices are given an ontological status that is independent of, but in relation with, discursive practices. The advantage in taking a critical realist, rather than relativist, approach is that analysis can …
The Case for Critical Realist Discourse Analysis as a Viable Method in Discursive Work
In this reply to Speer's response to our paper we argue that in presenting our method for doing critical realist discourse analysis (CRDA) our paper provided a systematic method from which to do CRDA that was timely, rigorous and significantly different from conversation analysis (CA) in its examination of material practices. We note that our paper addressed a methodological, not epistemological, issue and make a call for a commitment within the …
Old Clothes and an Older Look
Social cognition models (SCMs) have been described by Ingham as old clothes fit only for the jumble, yet their use in investigations of health behaviour performance in recent years has proliferated rather than declined. In a critique of the literature, this paper highlights a range of theoretical, methodological and performance-based limitations of the SCM approach and demonstrates that a ceiling has now been reached whereby more than half the va…
Reflections on the Use of a Phenomenological Method
This paper offers reflections on the use of a phenomenological method in the exploration of the experience of taking part in extreme sport. A phenomenological method was chosen in an attempt to gain some understanding of the meaning and significance of an embodied experience. The paper presents a brief account of the process and outcome of the research. This is followed by a discussion of the researcher's experience of conducting phenomenological…
The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research in Psychology
Introducing Qualitative Research in Psychology
Carla Willig introduces students to the rationale behind qualitative research methods and provides clear guidance on how to carry out basic qualitative research. Appendices include case studies on how past students have tackled such research
A Phenomenological Investigation of the Experience of Taking Part in `Extreme Sports
This article is concerned with what it may mean to individuals to engage in practices that are physically challenging and risky. The article questions the assumptions that psychological health is commensurate with maintaining physical safety, and that risking one's health and physical safety is necessarily a sign of psychopathology. The research was based upon semi-structured interviews with eight extreme sport practitioners. The interviews were …
Older Women and Everyday Talk about the Ageing Body
This discourse analytic study shows how 10 older women, who exercise regularly or attend the University of the Third Age, adjust to the ageing body in their `everyday talk' through taking a dualist position. The part of the body which is discursively constructed as ageing becomes objectified through appealing to a wider cultural discourse of ageing as biological decline. This dualist position is embedded within a wider cultural discourse of perso…
Unlike a Rock, a Tree, a Horse or an Angel
In this article I present some reflections on my experience of the process of wresting meaning from meaninglessness. My reflections are both personal and scholarly in that I trace my own experience of struggling with meaning-making and attempt to illuminate them with reference to published work, drawing on concepts from existentialist philosophy in particular. Much of what is contained in this article is based upon reflections recorded in my pers…
Cancer diagnosis as discursive capture
Layering the wounded self
This paper shows how a study using a pluralistic qualitative design explored the meaning–making process taking place around repetitive self–injury. By combining three interpretative lenses (interpretative phenomenological analysis, narrative analysis and psychosocial analysis), the researchers were able to develop a rich, multi–layered understanding of one individual’s experience of the behaviour. However, the project also raised significant meth…
Psychology (28 obras) · Sociology (28 obras) · Epistemology (18 obras) · Social Psychology (15 obras) · Linguistics (14 obras) · Political science (14 obras) · Social science (14 obras) · Philosophy (13 obras) · Qualitative research (13 obras) · Computer Science (12 obras)