How expert psychiatrists formulate criticisms of lay descriptions of psychiatry in front of a lay audience

Abstract

How do experts make their own expertise relevant in offering criticisms of non-experts when what they say is, itself, addressed to a radio audience of non-experts? Discourse analysis of 13 interviews between a professional journalist and practicing psychiatrists from the United Kingdom and the United States examined how interviewees challenged others' versions of psychiatric expertise. Analysis focused on how these descriptions were rhetorically designed to address the potential expectations and lack of expertise of a lay audience. Interviewees' descriptions establish why lay constructions of psychiatry are at fault while attending to the concern that they may be heard as criticizing a lay audience. The data reveal that interviewees deployed forms of membership categorization that attended to this potential interactional difficulty. The interviewees either categorized others in a way that potentially excluded audience members as targets of criticism or aligned themselves with those being criticized.