Discourse Analysis M.Lucero

Discourse Analysis

M.Lucero

and

M.Spyridakis

,

Spetses

, June 2017

Discourse

is no longer or solely either the study of linguistic forms or the study of language use.

Discourse

is

rather viewed

as a social

practice referring either to spoken or to written contexts.

M. Foucault, N.

Fairclough

Discourse is characterised as:

produced/consumed/monitored by

agents, i.e., social

actors (producers/receivers of social practices);

shaped by social structures;

with social implications;

socially valued and regulated (production, reception and circulation).

Hence, whereas in

traditional studies discourses were analysed in relation to social processes that form them, then recently researchers started talking about bidirectional and complex relations between discourses and social

practices.

For instance, the discourse about healthy food comes from social practices concerned with the meaning of having a certain lifestyle or even class position and vice versa.

Discourses of food Social Practice

“Healthy Food” Healthy lifestyle

Discourse: “A specific series of representations and practices through which meanings are produced, identities constituted, social relations established, and political and ethical outcomes made more possible”

(Gregory et al. 2009, 166).

Discourse Analysis

Formal Method vs. Critical Interpretative Approach

Primary concern: formal components & properties of linguistic representations vs. social practices made possible by language.

(Gregory et al. 2009, 167).

Critical Discourse Analysis

All the above plus the search for ideological and cultural meanings as well as for power relations, latent or overt in the text or what is perceived as such.

How to Do a Discourse Analysis

1) Establish the context

2) Explore the production process

3)

Code your

material

4) Examine

the structure of the

text

5)

Identify linguistic and rhetorical

mechanisms

6)

Interpret the

data

(this is a very general idea)

What is Coding?

“Coding is analysis” (Miles &

Huberman

1994, 56).

Coding, “involves taking text data or pictures gathered during data collection, segmenting sentences (or paragraphs) or images into categories, and labeling those categories with a term…” (Creswell 2009, 186).

“It is important to note the different epistemology here from many quantitative projects. What is generally of interest is not so much the codes as the text they denote, not how often they occur but what is in them” (

Crang

1997, 188).

Why code?

Minimize data overload

Some types of computer software can aid in content analysis

Useful in identifying themes and patterns

Can be used with many other methods

ethnography, interviews, surveys, discourse analysis, focus groups

For coding it is necessary to establish our analytic unit.

This may be a word, a phrase, a paragraph or even a mixture of these depending on what we are looking for.

Remember:

Utterances do not only say things, they do things.

Coding

is concerned with interpretation and representation of data. Post-structuralism is concerned with, “struggles over representation” (Johnston and

Sidaway

2004, 281).

Representations (be it a newspaper, photograph, or diary) are never neutral nor is the researcher neutral in analyzing the meaning of a text; representations are always tied up with power.

Baker, Paul. 2006.

Using corpora in discourse analysis.

Continuum Discourse Series, ed. Ken Hyland. New York: Continuum

.

Creswell

, John W. 2009.

Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches.

3

rd

ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications

.

Miles

, Matthew B. and A. Michael

Huberman

. 1994.

An expanded sourcebook: Qualitative data analysis.

2

nd

ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.