Representing Reality
Discourse, Rhetoric and Social Construction
- Jonathan Potter - Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA
`Since the publication of Potter & Wetherell's influential Discourse and Social Psychology, which laid the ground-plan for their version of discourse analysis, work has continued apace... As a progress report, the present text provides a valuable up-date, summarizing the main lines of development and usefully pulling together material heretofore only available from a disparate range of sources... As an introduction to this type of analysis, this is an admirable book which can be recommended to students with confidence, and is likely also to become an indispensable source of reference for those researching fact construction' - Discourse & Society
`Potter leaves the reader wanting more-which is a pretty good place to leave a reader' - Language in Society
Generally interesting approach to the topic, but there is little or no compatibility to historical discussions of "representation": in the discussions led by Lynn Hunt and Robert Charties, "working up representations" and "facts" would not be acceptable viewpoints in discussions. Rather, there is an - admittedly postmodernist - assumption that representation and perception are valuable by themselves. The book works well within its limits. Its main flaw is that it is bound to the constructionist school and does not seem to sufficiently reflect these limits. Nevertheless, Potter's will continue to be a source of inspiration for students of history as well as those of other disciplines.
