Editing Jonathan Potter (section)

==Work==

In 1984, Jonathan Potter published ''Social Texts and Context: Literature and Social Psychology'' with [[Margaret Wetherell]] and Peter Stringer. This collaboration developed alongside Potter and Wetherell's PhD research.

Potter co-authored the influential book ''Discourse and Social Psychology'' with Margaret Wetherell, which is a foundational text in the development of a discourse analytic approach to social psychology, now known as [[discursive psychology]]. The book introduced new ways to conceptualize fundamental social psychological concepts such as [[attitude (psychology)|attitudes]], categories, [[social representations]], and rules. It has been cited over three thousand times in more than a hundred different journals. One of its key contributions was the development of the analytic notion of 'interpretative repertoires,' adapted from Gilbert and Mulkay's work on scientific discourse, and its application to social psychological topics. A joint grant led by Margaret Wetherell resulted in the 1992 volume ''Mapping the Language of Racism'', which examined how racism is expressed and legitimized in conversations, newspaper articles, and parliamentary debates.

In the early 1990s, Potter and Derek Edwards authored ''Discursive Psychology'', establishing a specific style of work now prevalent in social science journals. This approach challenged core notions in cognitive psychology, particularly memory and attribution, by demonstrating that cognitive processes and events are embedded in and part of language use. For example, they reanalyzed [[Ulric Neisser]]'s work on the [[Watergate scandal|Watergate testimony]], showing how [[John Dean]]'s accounts of his memory were used by counsel in building the case against [[Richard Nixon]]. This work differed from earlier discourse analytic approaches by using records of natural interaction rather than open-ended interviews and focusing on sequential interaction instead of identifying interpretative repertoires.

In 1996, Potter published ''Representing Reality'', which built on his engagement with the sociology of scientific knowledge and other approaches to factuality. The book provided an overview, extension, and critique of [[social constructionism]] in the social sciences, developing a discursive version of constructionism in contrast to the more familiar social constructionism of thinkers such as [[Peter L. Berger]] and [[Thomas Luckmann]].

Potter co-edited ''Conversation and Cognition'' with Hedwig te Molder, a collection that brought together conversation analysts, ethnomethodologists, and discursive psychologists, including Geoff Coulter, John Heritage, Anita Pomerantz, and Robert Hopper, to address fundamental issues at the intersection of cognition and interaction.

In 2007, Potter edited a three-volume set of books that compiled a wide range of studies in discursive psychology.