DAM guides DP analysis through three core aspects: action (social actions performed by speakers), fact and interest (managing potential vested interests), and accountability (managing responsibility and blame). The model helps analysts identify how speakers accomplish particular social actions through strategic language use. It provides systematic framework for analyzing the rhetorical work people do in interaction. DAM emphasizes participants' practical concerns rather than abstract theoretical categories.

Discursive Action Model (DAM)

DP scholars often prefer naturally-occurring data that exists independently of researcher presence, such as recorded classroom conversations or medical assessments. This aligns with the post-cognitive stance by not relying on accessing internal mental states through interviews. However, researcher-generated data like interviews are also used but conceptualized as specific kinds of interaction. The preference reflects commitment to studying real-world language practices.

DP's Preference for Naturally-Occurring Data

This inductive analytic process involves engaging with data without imposing preconceived theoretical ideas or hypotheses. Analysts allow phenomena to emerge from the data by following what seems interesting or pertinent. The approach discovers new understandings of social actions through careful attention to participants' methods. It reflects DP's commitment to data-driven rather than theory-driven analysis.


Unmotivated Looking in DP

DP has been heavily influenced by Conversation Analysis (CA), which examines sequentiality and micro-details of talk and text. CA contributes methodological rigor through systematic analysis of turn-taking, repair, and sequential organization of interaction. This influence brings ethnomethodological attention to how participants accomplish social order through talk. The CA foundation provides empirical grounding for DP's claims about language's social functions.

Conversation Analysis' Influence on DP

DP utilizes detailed transcription systems, particularly Jefferson's conventions, to capture not only what is said but how it's uttered. These systems represent micro-details like pauses, overlapping speech, intonation shifts, volume changes, and emphasis. The detailed transcription allows fine-grained analysis of interaction and reveals how meaning emerges through delivery. This methodological precision supports claims about language's action-oriented nature.

DP's Use of Detailed Transcription Systems

- Conversation Analysis (CA)
- Discursive Action Model (DAM)
- Unmotivated Looking
- Jefferson Transcription System
- Naturally-Occurring Data

State University of New York at Binghamton

This chapter claims that parents utilize the rhetoric of 'burden' to persuasively construct their child’s behaviors as consistent with a legitimate psychiatric pathology, thereby warranting institutional intervention and mitigating potential blame regarding their parenting.

Chapter 3: Exploring the Rhetoric of ‘Burden’

Lester, J. N. (Ed.). (2021). Discursive Psychology and Disability. Palgrave Studies in Discursive Psychology. Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Reference For: Discursive Psychology and Disability

- Rhetorical Strategy Complex 
- Evidence-Building Arsenal

The Rhetorical Performance: How parents persuasively construct their case

- Doctorable Problem
- Institutional Legitimation
- Psychiatric Disability Framing
- Accountability Management

The Defense Architecture: Why parents shift blame & secure legitimation

The Methodological Foundation: How the research was conducted

This chapter DOES NOT moralize the rhetorical actions parents' take to shift blame for their child's behavior away from their parenting. Not using terms like good or bad, but instead presents their actions objectively; talking about how and why. This allows room for discussion on why parents feel pressured to account for their parenting methods when their children experience severe problems. 

In some cases, parenting methods are not to blame for their child's behavior, but parents' may still feel the need to preemptively shift the blame away from them due to societal tendencies to question one's parenting when a child misbehaves; a remnant of the moral model of disability. Shifting the blame away from them and onto the child would therefore save time and resources in finding a solution for the family and their child.

In cases where poor parenting is to blame, shifting the blame away from themselves allows parents to avoid addressing the issues they bring to their child, and force the child to shoulder all of the blame for their behavior.

Moralization of Parents Avoiding Blame for Child's Behavior

In this chapter, the rhetoric of 'burden' was studied during medical evaluations where parents' describe their difficulties with their child to a medical professional in the attempt to seek help.

Setting for Constructing Burden

Chapter 3 discusses parental narratives regarding children with mental health distress. DP analyzes how parents produce narratives of "burden", revealing the rhetorical labor required of families to secure support within medicalized systems.

Response to O’Reilly (Chapter 3: Mental Health)

- The Construction (The Process)
- The Gatekeeper (The Institution)
- The "What If" (Critical Reflection)

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