Jonathan Potter

Changing Emotion – An Emotionography of Anger 

Jonathan Potter  

Rutgers University, USA & Loughborough University, UK 

In the quarter century since Derek Edwards’ Discourse and Cognition (1997) laid out some of the challenges and possibilities of studying emotion as a phenomenon in and for interaction, a small but growing body of work has flourished. This includes studies of the way emotion is displayed and receipted, the way emotion categories do action and action ascription, and areas such as laughter, shame, and empathy which are often collected under the broad category emotion (e.g. Potter & Hepburn, 2020; Përakylä & Sorjonen, 2012; Robles & Weatherall, 2021; Shaw et al., 2013).  

This talk will focus on anger in the form of displays, orientations, ascriptions, and avowals using the example of King Charles’ leaky pen trouble, a reluctant child eater, a fraught family phone call, and an angry/not angry Tory MP.  The vernacular category ‘anger’ is dissolved into a set analyzable features with their own logic: symmetrical blaming; absent accounts and apologies; script and disposition management; object side and subject side constructions; interrogatives to highlight moral failings; heightened volume, pitch, emphasis; persistent overlap and disorganized delay.  

This analysis forms part of a broader project that is designed to change the orthodox psychology of emotion by offering an emotionography (Potter & Hepburn, in preparation).  This both reconfigures the topic of emotion and provides a new approach for its systematic study. This approach allows us to ask new questions and challenge existing thinking. 

Edwards, D. (1997). Discourse and cognition. Sage.

Peräkylä, A. & Sorjonen, M. L. (Eds)(2012). Emotion in interaction. Oxford University Press.

Potter, J. & Hepburn, A. (2020). Shaming interrogatives: Admonishments, the social psychology of emotion, and discursive practices of behaviour modification in family mealtimes. British Journal of Social Psychology, 59(2), 347-364.

Potter, J. & Hepburn, A. (in preparation). Emotionography: A Method for Analyzing Emotion in Psychology and the Social Sciences. American Psychological Association Press.

Weatherall, A. & Robles, J.S. (Eds)(2021). How Emotions Are Made in Talk. John Benjamins.

Shaw, C., Hepburn, A., & Potter, J. (2013). Having the last laugh: On post-completion laughter particles. In Glenn, P. & Holt, E. (Eds). Studies of laughter in interaction, 91-106.

Jonathan Potter is Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers University, and Honorary Professor in the School of Social Science and Humanities at Loughborough University. He has worked on basic theoretical and methodological issues in social science for more than 40 years. He has engaged with, and developed, post-structuralism (in Social Texts and Context, with Margaret Wetherell and Peter Stringer, 1984), discourse analysis (in Discourse and Social Psychology with Margaret Wetherell, 1987), discursive approaches to racism (in Mapping the Language of Racism, with Margaret Wetherell, 1992), discursive psychology (in Discursive Psychology, with Derek Edwards, 1992), and constructionism (systematically reworked in Representing Reality, 1996). Since then he coedited a collection on cognition in interaction research (Conversation and Cognition, with Hedwig te Molder, 2005) and coauthored an introduction to conversation analysis aimed at psychologists. A book with Alexa Hepburn for American Psychological Association: Emotionography: A Method for Analyzing Emotion in Psychology and the Social Sciences is due for publication in 2025.