Although much has been written about discourse analysis in recent years, little of it has been intelligible to the average undergraduate or even post graduate student. It has become a field in which terminological confusions abound and a bewildering variety of theoretical perspectives compete. This book, which is aimed at the advanced undergraduate student, is the first systematic and comprehensible introduction to the theory and application of discourse analysis within the field of social psychology and other related disciplines. In the first chapter of the book, the theoretical roots of discourse analysis in linguistic philosophy, ethnomethodology and semiotics are described. Chapter Two overviews the perspective of discourse analysis and illustrates its utility in studying attitudes. The following five substantive chapters deal with concepts which are at the heart of the study of social psychology: rules, accounts, the self, categories and social representations....