Qualitative Research Methods A4.2QM3 Discourse Analysis

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Qualitative Research MethodsA4.2QM3Discourse
Analysis

• Lecture 6
• C.Deighan_at_hw.ac.uk

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Discourse Analysis

• If someone told you that they had had a heart
  attack, depending on who you are, your age, sex,
  social circumstances, occupation, level of
  educational, political views may shape the way
  you construct the meaning of term heart attack.
• In other words it depends on the socio-cultural
  context.

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• If you were a doctor you may describe a heart
  attack in terms of blockage of arteries, and
  cells dying off (e.g in bio medical terms)
• As a psychologist you may talk in terms of
  psychological challenge or the stress or shock of
  the attack (psychosocial terms)
• You may describe the attack in terms of the pain
  felt, the emotions felt, or the possible
  consequences.

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• These may be seen as examples of different
  constructions of heart attack.
• The meanings you construct of heart attack may
  have consequences on the way you would cope in
  the aftermath of one.
• If you think that a heart attack is caused by
  stress then you would be more likely to avoid
  situations where increased stress is likely to
  occur, if you construct a heart attack as an
  event that occurs as a result of unhealthy living
  you may make changes to your lifestyle.

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• It makes sense that in order to give
  psychological help people who have had heart
  attacks it is important to be aware of peoples
  own construction of the term.
• Discourse analysis is an approach which affords
  the investigation of how people construct
  meanings of something like a heart attack and
  also how they make use of the meaning, through
  talk and text.

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Discourse Analysis (DA)

• Stems from the premises of Austin (1961) and
  Wittgenstein (1953), Gergen (1973)
• that language is not a passive reflection of
  reality, but that all speech serves an active
  function,
• and language itself is an active process of
  reality construction.
• Discourse itself is the site of reality
  construction

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The construction of anorexia nervosa

• Can study how the subject of anorexia nervosa is
  constructed historically by examining past texts.
• Medieval times spiritual starvation.
• 19th C constructed as womens hysterical
  affliction
• 20th labelled women as anorexic and also as a
  disease
• 21st recognition that men affected too, in past
  men more likely to be labelled depressive for
  same manifestation of the problem whereas women
  experiencing same problems more likely to be
  diagnosed with eating disorder.
• So anorexia nervosa does not have a fixed
  construction dependant on social/historical
  context.
• Different constructions used by health
  professionals and those experiencing AN.
  Sometimes the latter may use the construction of
  the former.

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2 types of Discourse Analysis

• Can approach the data interpreting texts in terms
  of wider social political influences.
• - This type of DA adopted by Foucault (1971), and
  neo-marxist critical theorists and linked to
  critical approaches such as critical psychology,
  critical public health psychology.

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Focus of discourse analysis in psychology.

• Take the treatment of the subject of identity as
  an example
• DA examines when and how identities are
  invoked and constructed in conversation.

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Discursive Psychology

• Examines how people carry out psychological
  activities such as
• Justification (justifying speech acts etc)
• Rationalisation (providing reason/rationale for
  views/behaviour.
• Categorisation (how people groups others,
  position self etc)
• Attribution (how people account for others, self
  in terms of behaviour, views etc.
• .

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Examining the action orientation of talk.

• What the talk is doing
• What strategies the speakers are using.
• How people manage their stake or interest.
• Using discursive strategies such as disclaiming
  or footing.

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Data collection

• Ideally should be naturally occurring text or
  talk (so questions raised are unsolicited).
• Problem with ethics problematic to tape
  peoples conversations without their knowledge.
• However can analyse discourse in the public
  domain such as online open discussions.
• Semi-structured interviews difficult because they
  tend to influence the orientation of the
  conversation.
• Group discussions are better, preferably in pre
  existing groups.

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• Transcripts for discourse analysis can be very
  time consuming 1 hour of tape 10 hours of
  transcribing, need to take not of pauses,
  overlaps, changes in emphasis and volume etc.
• Sample size is often dictated by practical
  considerations such as time available.
• But do not need to work with vast amount of texts
  for meaningful analysis, but may need to get a
  range different interviews, different contexts.

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How to do discourse analysis

• More than just a methodology, like grounded
  theory it is both an approach and a method.
• Since it is an approach which views language as
  constructive functional (not a reflection of
  inner cognitive processes)- DA requires different
  questions to be asked.

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• Instead of asking what participants responses
  tell us about their attitudes, thoughts beliefs
  Need to ask what is this discourse doing?
• Discursive analysis can be described as a
  particular way of reading, since DA requires us
  to adopt an orientation to talk and text as
  social action, it cannot be learned from one day
  to the next and it cannot be followed like a
  recipe (Willig 200144)

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Procedure for DAGuidelines (Potter Weatherall
1987)

• Reading Need time to read transcripts. Read once
  without any attempt for analysis to experience as
  a reader the discursive effects
• Coding Done in light of research question (unlike
  grounded theory where rq may arise later). Need
  to look out for implicit constructions (remember
  we discussed latent categories in content
  analysis not always explicit)
• Analysis 2 key questions
• Why am I reading this passage in this way?
• What features (of the text) produce this reading

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Analysis

• Need to systematically explore the texts on 3
  dimensions (Potter Weatherall 1987)
• Context (how the text constructs its objects
  subjects)
• Variability (how such constructions differ or
  vary across contexts)
• Construction (terminology used, grammatical
  features, metaphors used, preferred figures of
  speech)

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Interpretative Repertoires

• Different repertoires are used to construct
  different versions of an event.
• Newspaper article may refer to young offenders as
  young tearaways (orienting to problems of
  policing) while defending lawyer may describe
  his/her clients as no hope kids (orienting to
  under privileged childhood (Potter Weatherall
  1987).
• Different repertoires may be used by one and the
  same speaker, may be contradictory.
• Need to take account of context to access the
  reasons or functions of the repertoires used.

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Writing up

• Introduction Often consists of discussion of
  limitations of existing research in relation to
  topic. (e.g limitations of cognitive attitude
  research)
• But with more discourse analytic studies emerging
  these will be discussed too.

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Writing up

• Method section should
• provide some information about the nature of
  discourse analysis both theoretical and
  practical.
• Describe data collection technique,
  questions,participants, context.
• But rather than providing standard demographic
  information (contradicts the approach of DA
  social constructionism), describes the context of
  the interaction being examined.

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Writing Up

• Analysis section often merged with discussion
  section
• May want to present the analysis in terms of
  interpretive repertoires.
• Culture as heritage
• Culture as therapy
• Smoking as health threat
• Smoking as rebellion
• Smoking as economic necessity

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Writing up

• Analysis/discussion could also be presented in a
  way that the discursive strategies form the
  structure disclaiming or footing for instance
• Most studies will include a combination of
  interpretive repertoires and discursive
  stratagies with excerpts from transcripts.
• May want to include a conclusion to suggest the
  wider implications of the research findings.

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Next weeks lecture (week 7)Talk by Dr Jennifer
Guise

• How do sufferers construct ME (Myalgic
  Encephalomyelitis) and why is this crucial in the
  development of treatment for this condition
  (known medically as CFS or Chronic Fatigue
  Syndrome).