Discursive psychology and emotion

Discursive psychology (DP) offers a window onto the way emotion and cognition play out in everyday interaction. As one of the pioneers of DP, Edwards has been instrumental in shaping this approach, and his work on emotion and interaction has been particularly inspiring. In this chapter we consider this impact by providing an understanding of the concerns that motivated Edwards, the contributions of the paper and the lasting impact that his research has had on how emotion is conceptualized. Edwards developed a discursive psychology of emotion that examined two things: the ways in which emotion categories can be threaded through everyday talk, and how people use ascriptions and avowals of emotion to perform actions in talk. This focus on how wonderfully useful emotion categories and descriptions can be for speakers had never been done, and still sits in stark contrast to classic individualist studies that characterize the discipline of psychology.