Cover not available
Article published In:
Language and Dialogue
Vol. 12:3 (2022) ► pp.335–359

Governmentality-in-action

The pursuit of happiness and identity-work in graduate career coaching interaction

| Université Polytechnique Hauts-de-France
| Ghent University
| Universitat de Valencia
| Leiden University Centre for Linguistics
Foucault’s notion of governmentality has been the focus of much research. However, little work provides an account of how governmentality is enacted as social practice. Using transcripts of naturally-occurring talk taken from a face-to-face coaching session and text taken from a career consultant’s website as data, the purpose of this paper is to make visible, and thus analysable, the way in which governmentality and the regulation of identities are enacted. In order to do this, we use critical discursive psychology as a method. Findings indicate that the coach is talked into being as an expert who diagnoses a ‘problem’ concerning the coachee’s career path and provides advice on how to solve the ‘problem’. This advice, drawing on wider social Discourses of happiness at work, regulates the identity of the coachee by prescribing acceptable ways of thinking about, and acting on, the self and so enacts governmentality.
Keywords: identity, epistemics, deontics, interpretive repertoire, critical discursive psychology, career coaching
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Governmentality
  • 3.Method – Critical discursive psychology
  • 4.Discursive identities
  • 5.Data
  • 6.Analyses
    • 6.1The psychometric test and company website
    • 6.2The coaching session
      • 6.2.1Extract One: The diagnosis
      • 6.2.2Extract Two: The cure
      • 6.2.3Extract Three: Resistance
  • 7.Observations and discussion
  • Note
  • References
Published online: 14 March 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ld.00117.cli
References (51)
References
Alvesson, Mats and Hugh Willmott. 2002. “Identity Regulation as Organizational Control: Producing the Appropriate Individual”. Journal of Management Studies 39(5): 619–644. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Benwell, Bethan and Elizabeth Stokoe. 2010. “Analysing Identity in Interaction: Contrasting Discourse, Genealogical, Narrative and Conversation Analysis”. In The Sage Handbook of Identities, ed. by Margaret Wetherell and Chandra Talpade Mohanty, 82–101. London: Sage. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Binkley, Sam. 2011. “Happiness, Positive Psychology and the Program of Neoliberal Governmentality”. Subjectivity 4(4): 371–394. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2014. Happiness as Enterprise: An Essay on Neoliberal Life. New York: Suny Press.Google Scholar
Bondi, Liz. 2005. “Working the Spaces of Neoliberal Subjectivity: Psychotherapeutic Technologies, Professionalisation and Counselling”. Antipode 37(3): 497–514. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bouton, Katie. (2015, July 17). “Recruiting for Cultural Fit”. Harvard Business Review (online). [URL]
Brownlie, Julie. 2004. “Tasting the Witches’ Brew: Foucault and Therapeutic Practices”. Sociology 38(3): 515–532. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bucholtz, Mary and Kira Hall. 2005. “Identity and Interaction: A Sociocultural Linguistic Approach”. Discourse Studies 7(4–5): 585–614. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cabanas, Edgar, and Eva Illouz. 2019. Manufacturing Happy Citizens: How the Science and Industry of Happiness Control our Lives. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Cameron, Kim and Robert Quinn. 1999. Diagnosing and Changing Organizational Culture: Based on The Competing Values Framework. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.Google Scholar
Clifton, Jonathan, Dorien Van De Mieroop, and Prachee Sehgal. 2018. “The Multimodal Enactment of Deontic and Epistemic Authority in Indian Meetings”. Pragmatics 28(3): 333–360. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Drew, Paul. 1991. “Asymmetries of knowledge in conversational interactions”. In Asymmetries in Dialogue, ed. by Ivanna Markovà and Klaus Foppa, 29–48. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf.Google Scholar
Du Gay, Paul. 1996. Consumption and Identity at Work. London: Sage. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Edley, Nigel. 2001. “Analysing Masculinity: Interpretative Repertoires, Ideological Dilemmas and Subject Positions.” In Discourse as Data: A Guide for Analysis, ed. by Margaret Wetherell, Stephanie Taylor, and Simeon Yates, 189–228. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Edley, Nigel and Margaret Wetherell. 1997. “Jockeying for Position: The Construction of Masculine Identities.” Discourse & Society 8(2): 203–217. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fogde, Marinette. 2011. “Governing through career coaching: negotiations of self-marketing.” Organization 18(1): 65–82. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1977. Discipline and Punish. The Birth of the Prison. London. Allen Lane.Google Scholar
. 1978. “Politics and the Study of Discourse”. Ideology and Consciousness 31: 7–26.Google Scholar
. 1988. “Technologies of the Self” in Technologies of the Self, ed. by Luther H. Martin, Huck Gutman, and Patrick H. Hutton, 16–49. London: Tavistock.Google Scholar
. 1991. “Governmentality”. In The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, ed. by Graham Burchell, ‎Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller, 87–104. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf.Google Scholar
. 1997. Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth. Essential Works of Michel Foucault, 1954–1984. Vol. 11. New York: New Press.Google Scholar
Garfinkel, Harold. 1967. Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Gee, James Paul. 1999. An Introduction to Discourse Analysis: Theory and Method. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
. 2015. “Discourse, Small d, Big D.” In The International Encyclopaedia of Language and Social Interaction, ed. by Karen Tracey 1–5. New York: Wiley Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goffman, Erving. 1981. Forms of Talk. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Hacking, Ian. 2004. “Between Michel Foucault and Erving Goffman: between Discourse in the Abstract and Face-to-Face Interaction”. Economy and Society 33(3): 277–302. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Heritage, John. 2012. “The Epistemic Engine: Sequence Organization and Territories of Knowledge”. Research on Language & Social Interaction 45(1): 30–52. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Heritage, John and Rodney Watson. 1979. “Formulations as Conversational Objects”. In Everyday Language: Studies in Ethnomethodology, ed. by George Psathas, 123–162. New York: Irvington.Google Scholar
Hodges, Ian. 2002. “Moving Beyond Words: Therapeutic Discourse and Ethical Problematization.” Discourse Studies 4(4): 455–479. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Landmark, Anne Marie Dalby, Pål Gulbrandsen, and Jan Svennevig. 2015. “Whose decision? Negotiating epistemic and deontic rights in medical treatment decisions.” Journal of Pragmatics 781: 54–69. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Layard, Richard. 2005. Happiness: Lessons from a New Science. London: Allen Lane.Google Scholar
Levinson, Stephen. 1992. “Activity Types and Language”. In Talk at Work. Interaction in Institutional Settings, ed. by Paul Drew and John Heritage, 66–100. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Martinussen, Maree and Margaret Wetherell. 2019. “Affect, Practice and Contingency: Critical Discursive Psychology and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick”. Subjectivity 12(2): 101–116. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Miller, Gale and Kathryn Fox. 2004. “Building Bridges. The Possibility of Analytic Dialogue Between Ethnography, Conversation Analysis and Foucault”. In Qualitative Research. Theory, Method and Practice, ed. by David Silverman 35–55. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Pomerantz, Anita. 1984a. “Agreeing and disagreeing with assessments: Some features of preferred/ dispreferred turn shaped”. In Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis, ed. by J. Maxwell Atkinson and John Heritage 57–101. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
. 1984b. “Giving a source or basis: The practice in conversation of telling ‘how I know’.” Journal of Pragmatics 8(5–6): 607–625. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Potter, Jonathan and Margaret Wetherell. 1987. Discourse and Social Psychology. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Raffnsøe, Sverre, Andrea Mennicken, and Peter Miller. 2019. “The Foucault Effect in Organization Studies.” Organization Studies 40(2): 155–182. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rampton, Ben. 2014. “Gumperz and Governmentality in the 21st Century: Interaction, Power and Subjectivity.” Tilburg Papers in Cultural Studies. Available at: [URL]
Raymond, Geoffrey. 2000. “The Voice of Authority: The Local Accomplishment of Authoritative Discourse in Live News Broadcasts.” Discourse Studies 2(3): 354–379. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Reynolds, Jill and Margaret Wetherell. 2003. “The Discursive Climate of Singleness: The Consequences for Women’s Negotiation of a Single Identity.” Feminism & Psychology 13(4): 489–510. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rose, Nikolas. 1990. Governing the Soul. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
. 1998. Inventing Ourselves. Psychology, Power and Personhood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Rose, Nikolas, Pat O’Malley, and Mariana Valverde. 2006. “Governmentality”. Annual Review of Law and Social Science 2(1): 83–104. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel. 1997. “Whose text? Whose context?” Discourse & Society 8(2): 165–187. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Seligman, Martin. 2011. Flourish: A New Understanding of Happiness and Well-being – and How to Achieve them. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Stevanovic, Melisa and Anssi Peräkylä. 2012. “Deontic Authority in Interaction: The Right to Announce, Propose, and Decide.” Research on Language & Social Interaction 45(3): 297–321. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Taylor, Stephanie. 2015. “Discursive and Psychosocial? Theorising a Complex Contemporary Subject.” Qualitative Research in Psychology 12(1): 8–21. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wetherell, Margaret. 1998. “Positioning and Interpretative Repertoires: Conversation Analysis and Post-Structuralism in Dialogue.” Discourse & Society 9(3): 387–412. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wetherell, Margaret and Nigel Edley. 2009. “ Masculinity Manoeuvres: Critical Discourse Psychology and the Analysis of Identity Strategies ”. In The New Sociolinguistics Reader, ed. by Nikolas Coupland and Adam Jaworski, 201–214. Basingstoke: Palgrave. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wiggins, Sally and Jonathan Potter. 2017. “Discursive Psychology”. In The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research in Psychology, ed. by Carla Willig and Wendy Stainton Rogers, 93–110. London: Sage. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Salomaa, Elina
2024. Digital facilitation-as-a-process: The mismatch between promotional text and situated interaction. Discourse, Context & Media 62 ► pp. 100834 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 22 october 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.