Introduction

One of discursive psychology's key concerns has been the ways in which talk manages subject–object relations, or mind–world relations (Edwards, 1997). Early interest focused on factual discourse (e.g., Edwards and Potter, 1992; Potter, 1996), the ‘object side’, but this was already part of a general interest in respecifying psychological topics such as memory (Edwards and Middleton, 1986; Edwards, Middleton and Potter, 1992) and attitudes (Potter and Wetherell, 1987), as practices performed in discourse and social interaction. The ‘object side’ issue was how, in producing versions of things and events, speakers (or writers of text) build the factual status or objectivity of what they are saying. That is to say, we examined how descriptions and accounts are produced as reflections of the things they are about. The ‘subject side’ is an integral part of those same practices of description and accountability. By working up the subjective status of an account, generally somebody else's account, its objectivity is undermined. Subjective or ‘subject side’ accounts are ones that reflect a speaker's ‘stake and interest’ in a topic (Edwards and Potter, 1992).

It is important to emphasise that these are not inferences drawn by the analyst, that a given speaker or stretch of talk actually is subjective or objective. Rather, these are matters attended to in the talk itself. In the argot of ethnomethodology, they are members' concerns.