Drawing upon ethnomethodology, conversation analysis, linguistic philosophy and social studies of science, Derek Edwards makes a compelling case for language to be best understood as a kind of activity, as discourse. These influences underpin a fascinating intellectual survey ranging across cognitivism, discursive psychology, shared knowledge, categories and metaphor, emotion and narrative. The emphasis throughout is on the value of close empirical study of text and talk, through which the topics of mind, world and who we are' are seen as ways of talking'.

Challenging the traditional view of memory as the product and property of individual minds, this book investigates remembering and forgetting as socially constituted activities.

Uses discourse analytic terms to examine some of psychology's most fundamental concepts. Focusing on memory and attribution, the book shows the way their compartmentalization and failure to theorize adequately about language usage in everyday social practices has led to important weaknesses.

The central project of this volume is a reappraisal of some of the great debates in psychology in the light of recent theoretical and empirical developments. The author reviews a range of thought and research to demonstrate how the dominant cognitive approach to psychology has failed.

First published in 1987, Common Knowledge offers a radical departure from the traditionally individualistic psychologies which have underpinned modern approaches to educational theory and practice. The authors present a study of education as the creation of 'common knowledge' or shared understanding between teacher and pupils. They show the presenting, receiving, sharing, controlling, negotiating, understanding and misunderstanding of knowledge in the classroom to be an intrinsically social communicative process which can be revealed only through close analysis of joint activity and classroom...

First published in 1987, Common Knowledge offers a radical departure from the traditionally individualistic psychologies which have underpinned modern approaches to educational theory and practice. The authors present a study of education as the creation of 'common knowledge' or shared understanding between teacher and pupils. They show the presenting, receiving, sharing, controlling, negotiating, understanding and misunderstanding of knowledge in the classroom to be an intrinsically social communicative process which can be revealed only through close analysis of joint activity and classroom...