Truth and Rhetoric
The Promise of John Dean's Memory to the Discipline of Psychology
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8975029 |
|---|---|
| Authors | David Kaposi (0000-0001-9910-0172, University of Derby, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2011 |
| Volume | 42 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 1-19 |
| Publication date | 2011-07-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-8308 • E-ISSN: 1468-5914 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1468-5914.2011.00473.x |
| OpenAlex | W1944451443 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 35 |
The paper unpacks the far‐reaching theoretical and practical issues that underlay the classical debate between cognitive psychologist Ulric Neisser and discursive social psychologists Derek Edwards and Jonathan Potter on Watergate witness John Dean's memory. Accounting for their disagreements, Neisser claimed the mantle of the cognitive‐ecological approach to memory and emphasized the psychologist's ultimate priority of truth over discourse, while Edwards and Potter claimed that of discursive/rhetorical psychology and focused exclusively on discourse over truth. As such, the debate at the time ended in mutual misunderstanding and the shadow of theoretical incommensurability. However, a rhetorical analysis of the arguments suggests that Neisser was right about truth when he intuitively sensed the importance of discourse, and Edwards and Potter were right about discourse when they did not lose sight of truth. Therefore, beyond the impasse there has remained a promise inherent in the debate: it demonstrated an imaginative attempt to undermine the absolute dichotomy of truth and rhetoric and demonstrate their mutual inter‐dependence. As will be argued, such integration of traditional concerns of the psychologist entails the re‐conceptualization of the discipline as political and moral science
Conceptualization · Epistemology · Linguistics · Political science · Politics · Psychoanalysis · Rhetoric · Rhetorical question · Shadow (psychology · Sociology · Emotions and Moral Behavior · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Representations and Identity
The explanation of social behaviour
The context of social psychology
Discourse and Cognition
Actual Minds, Possible Worlds
Psychology without Foundations
The Discursive Mind
Verbal behavior.
John Dean's memory
The Social Identity Approach in Social Psychology
Social representations
Realities and relationships
Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth
Syntactic Structures
The bankruptcy of everyday memory
Some everyday thoughts on ecologically valid methods
In defense of everyday memory
The bankruptcy of everyday memory
They read an article? A commentary on the everyday memory controversy
Whose Terms? Whose Ordinariness? Rhetoric and Ideology in Conversation Analysis
Making psychology relevant
Psychology as a Moral Science
Joint remembering
Social categorization and intergroup behaviour
Watergate
Toward Transformation in Social Knowledge
Freudian Repression
Social psychology as history
Death and Furniture
Verbal behavior
| Highly cited | No |
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