First published 1995 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York,
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This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2006.

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© 1995 Vivien Burr
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 Contents

Preface vii
Acknowledgements ix

Introduction: What is social constructionism? 1

1 Where do you get your personality from? 12
2 Does language affect the way we think? 22
3 What is a discourse? 31
4 What does it mean to have power? 42
5 Is there a real world outside discourse? 54
6 Can individuals change society? 65
7 What does it mean to be a person? I The person as discourse-user 78
8 What does it mean to be a person? II The self as constructed in language 86
9 What does it mean to be a person? III Subject positions in discourse 96
10 What do discourse analysts do? 110

Glossary 128
Bibliography 130
Name index 135
Subject index 138
 Preface

This book is for students. As a lecturer teaching social psychology to Behavioural

Sciences undergraduates, I have in recent years attempted to include in my teaching
something of what I shall call the social constructionist movement within social
psychology. This has proved to be a difficult task, partly because of the inherent
difficulty of the subject matter, but also because of the dearth of reading material
appropriate to the needs of students coming to social constructionist ideas for the first
time. Although there exist a number of excellent books written from a social
constructionist perspective (e.g. Potter and Wetherell, 1987; Weedon, 1987; Shotter,
1993a, 1993b; Parker, 1992), for the most part these appear to be written by academics
for other academics. This book, then, is an attempt to redress the balance. Its primary aim
is to introduce social constructionist ideas to social sciences students so that they may
then be in a position to read and understand more advanced material. To this end, I have
tried to explain the key concepts and terms clearly and simply, and have used illustrative
examples as much as possible in order to help students gain a foothold in what may be to
them quite alien territory. To guide students in their choice of more advanced reading, I
have provided a short, annotated reading list at the end of each chapter. Sometimes it was
an arbitrary decision whether to recommend a book or journal article in an earlier or a
later chapter, and sometimes I have done both.
I believe that it is not possible to write about something in a completely impartial and
dispassionate way, that is, taking up no personal stance at all with respect to the subject
matter (and as it happens this itself appears to be consistent with a social constructionist
view). One must (even if only to engage the interest of one’s readers) decide whether one
is on the whole an advocate or a critic of the material one is writing about. In writing this
book, I have generally adopted the position of the advocate, so that my overall strategy
has been to persuade the reader of the advantages of a social constructionist approach.
However, this is not an uncritical advocacy, and a second major aim of this book is to
point out the weaknesses, inadequacies and dangers of social constructionism and to
indicate the areas where I believe there is still much to be resolved. As one who has as
yet no history of publication or research in this area, I feel myself to be particularly free
of axes to grind and reputations to defend, and therefore able to advocate and criticise
with relative impugnity.
As an introductory text, some may feel that my account of social constructionism is
somewhat idiosyncratic. However, while it may not be the story that another person
would have told, I justify it on the grounds, firstly, that it concerns itself with social
constructionist viewpoints that I believe students are likely to meet up with in their
excursions into the literature, and, secondly, that it reflects the questions (built into the
chapter titles) most commonly raised by students. Although the book is British in its
emphasis, drawing examples from issues and everyday life in the UK and highlighting
the debates current in British social constructionist writing, it brings together both British
and North American contributions under a common umbrella. With respect to the