Representing Reality: Discourse, Rhetoric and Social Construction

Jonathan Potter's "Representing Reality" is a masterwork on the creation of 'facts' in social life. His work draws from and integrates several areas of related literature including discursive social psychology, rhetoric, discourse analysis, sociology, and ethnomethodology. I was particularly interested in how Potter showed that different assertions of what reality 'is' are often voiced in a competitive, contested climate and how those asserted realities implicitly are created to forestall challenges from other versions of 'what the facts are'. . I would recommend that readers interested in this area also examine (1) John Searle's (1995) book "The construction of social reality", (2)Stephen Toulmin's work on data, warrants, and claims, and (3) Bernard Guerin's paper in the _Review of General Psychology_ in 2003 ("Language Use as Social Strategy: A Review and an Analytic Framework for the Social Sciences") that features an interesting take on creating and disputing 'readings' or 'versions' of reality based on what are proposed as 'factual data'. These are, of course, recommended in addition to Berger and Luckmann's (1967) seminal book on the social construction of reality in everyday life. Potter's book is truly a remarkable work. ANY person interested in how different versions of reality are socially constructed should get this book.

This is one of my all-time favorite discourse analytic books. Jonathan Potter, a professor in the U.K., illustrates how rhetoric and discourse analysis can come together in provocative ways. The initial two or three chapters are, in my opinion, a bit tedious in their set-up of later chapters, but the analytic sections in the latter half of the book have no equal in this area. Potter's writing is fun to read, and the examples he uses are sometimes humorous. Fans of Potter's other work will not be disappointed