Reply to Potter and McKinlay
Peter Halfpenny · Social Studies of Science · 1989
discourse analyst is not in the philosophical question, but in conflicts which have consequences in the participants' own social settings. This interpretative frame colours Halfpenny's entire interpretation of OPB and WW. It is because Halfpenny construes variability in philosophical terms that he misses the significance of the chapter of OPB concerned with the TWOD (Truth Will Out Device). The point of this chapter is that it documents the real participants' conflicts that the juxtaposition of contingent and empiricist accounting generate, and one of the techniques that scientists used in their resolution. The contradiction between repertoires is not viewed as an abstract phenomenon that philosophical analysis might sort out, but a feature of members' social worlds. Other DA studies extend this type of analysis: J. Potter, 'Reading Repertoires: A Preliminary Study of Some Techniques that Scientists Use to Construct Readings', Science and Technology Studies, Vol. 5 (1987), 112-21; A. McKinlay and Potter, 'Model Discourse: Interpretative Repertoires in Scientists' Conference Talk', Social Studies of Science, Vol. 17 (1987), 443-63; Wetherell & Potter, op. cit. note 13.