Faculty of Arts
School of Humanities
9709128f
enzo@hixnet.co.za / This research report undertook an original exploration into the workings of addiction.
The theoretical insights of discursive psychology were applied to the study of opiate
addiction and were used to analyse the manner in which using and non-using
informants were able to constitute addiction through discourse. By comparing the
discursive accounts of self-defined recovered, recovering and currently addicted
users, the report highlighted how ways of speaking about substances and their use
may be implicated in the maintenance and cessation of addiction.
The transcripts of four focus groups, consisting of a total number of 15 informants,
were qualitatively analysed using a thematic method that focused on the informants’
strategic use of discourse. The analysis revealed important differences between using
and non-using informants in terms of the self employed discursive practices that they
used in constructing their experience of addiction. Differences included variations in
the attribution of agency to either the opiate or the informant and the degree to which
opiate use was presented as cause for concern or not. These and other differences
were explored in detail together with their potential implications, functions and
apparent effects on the users’ capacity to maintain abstinence as opposed to
continuing to use.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:wits/oai:wiredspace.wits.ac.za:10539/1459 |
| Date | 26 October 2006 |
| Creators | Sinisi, Vincenzo |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 12590 bytes, 1070670 bytes, application/pdf, application/pdf, application/pdf, application/pdf |
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