Doing Discourse Analysis

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Doing Discourse Analysis

• Cynthia Hardy
• University of Melbourne
• Nelson Phillips
• University of Cambridge

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Outline

• What is Discourse Analysis?
• Definitions
• Discourse Analysis as Method and Methodology
• Different Perspectives in Discourse Analysis
• Theoretical Approaches
• Using Discourse Analysis in our own Work
• Setting up a Research Project using Discourse
  Analysis
• Choosing a Research Question and a Research Site
• Collecting and Analyzing Data
• Writing it Up

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Definitions
What is Discourse Analysis?

• Discourses are inter-related sets of texts
  (including the practices of production,
  dissemination and reception) that bring an object
  into being
• Discourses are embodied and enacted in texts
• Discourse analysis is the systematic study of
  texts to ascertain the constructive effects of
  discourse
• Texts are meaningful only through their
  connections to other texts. Therefore we must
  refer to bodies of texts
• Discourses do not possess meaning to
  understand their effects, we must understand the
  context

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Discourse Analysis as Method and Methodology
What is Discourse Analysis?

• Discourse analysis involves a strong social
  constructivist view of the social world
• Discourse analysis is not simply a set of
  techniques for conducting research it also
  involves a set of assumptions concerning the
  constructive effects of language
• Reflexivity and the role of the researcher

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Discourse compared to other Qualitative Methods
What is Discourse Analysis?

• Traditional qualitative approaches tend to assume
  a social world and then understand its meaning
  for participants
• Discourse analysis tries to
• explore how the socially produced ideas and
  objects that populate the world are created in
  the first place
• explore how they are maintained and held in place
• Traditional qualitative approaches try to
  understand or interpret social reality as it
  exists
• Discourse analysis tries to uncover the way in
  which it is produced.

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Challenges of Doing Discourse Analysis
What is Discourse Analysis?

• How to incorporate text, context and discourse
• How to select texts
• How to incorporate bodies of texts
• How to decide how to analyze the data
• How to make a highly subjective analysis
  persuasive
• How to be reflexive
• How to write it up

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Different Approaches to Discourse Analysis
Different Perspectives

• Text/Context
• Context distal context e.g., social class,
  institutions/ sites where discourse occurs,
  cultural settings
• Text proximate context e.g., immediate features
  of the interaction
• Critical/Constructionist
• Critical relation of language to power and
  privilege (degrees of agency)
• Constructionist process whereby phenomena are
  created, reified and come to constitute reality
  

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Different Approaches to Discourse Analysis
Different Perspectives
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Examples of Theoretical Orientation
Different Perspectives

• Social Linguistic Analysis
• Aim is a close reading of the text to provide
  insight into its organization and construction,
  and how texts construct phenomena
• Interpretive Structuralism
• Aim is to understand some aspect of the broader
  social context and the discourse that supports it

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Examples of Theoretical Orientation
Different Perspectives

• Critical Discourse Analysis
• Aim is to focus on the role of discursive
  activity in constituting and sustaining unequal
  power relations
• Critical Linguistic Analysis
• Aim is to understand how structures of domination
  in the proximate context are implicated in the
  text

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Examples of Empirical Study
Different Perspectives

• Social Control
• e.g., Mumby
• Studies of Work
• e.g., Orr
• Business Practice
• e.g., Knights Morgan
• Discourses of Difference
• e.g.,Potter Wetherell
• Identity Production
• e.g., Phillips and Hardy
• The Environment
• e.g., Macnaghten

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Using Discourse Analysis in Our Work
Different Perspectives

• Refugee systems in Canada, UK, and Denmark
• Whale-watching in BC
• The HIV/AIDS treatment domain in Canada
• Mère et Enfant (NGO in the West Bank Gaza)
• Employment Services in BC

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Contributions of Discourse Analysis in Our Work
Different Perspectives

• Studying Identity
• Whales, PWAs, and refugees
• Revitalizing our Critical Approach
• Political and strategic effects of discursive
  moves
• New Perspectives on Existing Theoretical Debates
  
• Institutional theory, domain theory, trust

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Developing a Research Question
Setting up a Research Project

• Philosophy
• Relate to position in the matrix
• Object of study
• Relate to what you are studying
• Theoretical Influences
• Relate to the theories in which you are
  interested
• Contribution
• Relate to the contribution you hope to make

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Our Approaches to Discourse Analysis
Setting up a Research Project
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Research Questions Philosophy
Setting up a Research Project

• Context/Critical
• How do organizations produce refugees as objects,
  thereby influencing the determination system?
• Context/Constructive
• What activities constitute institutional
  entrepreneurship by peripheral actors?
• Text/Constructive
• How does conversational activity (the workshop)
  lead to collaboration?
• Text/Critical
• What discursive resources are used to construct
  an organization?

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Developing a Research Question
Setting up a Research Project

• What research philosophy underpins your research?
• What is your object of study?
• What theoretical influences are you drawing on?
• What contribution do you hope to make?
• What is your research question?

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Selecting a Site
Setting up a Research Project

• Theoretical considerations transparency
• Refugee study
• HIV/AIDS treatment domain
• Practical considerations opportunity
• Cartoons
• Mère et Enfant

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Selecting a Site
Setting up a Research Project

• Does the research site have characteristics that
  make it likely to produce interesting results?
• Are research sites sufficiently similar/different
  along theoretical dimensions to allow comparative
  analysis?
• Is the research site likely to produce
  transparent findings?
• Has a good source of discursive data presented
  itself?
• Has a crisis occurred that will reveal insight
  into discursive activity?

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Collecting Data
Setting up a Research Project

• Different types of text
• Naturally occurring text
• Interviews?
• Bodies of texts
• Selecting texts

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Collecting Data
Setting up a Research Project

• What texts are the most important in constructing
  the object of analysis?
• What texts are produced by the most powerful
  actors, transmitted through the most effective
  channels, and interpreted by the most recipients?

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Collecting Data
Setting up a Research Project

• Which of the above texts are available for
  analysis?
• Which of the above texts is it feasible to
  analyze?
• How will I sample these texts?
• How will I explain the choices I have made?

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Analyzing Data
Setting up a Research Project

• Cartoons as a fragment of immigration discourse
• What objects were constructed in each cartoon?
• Refugee, government, immigration system, public
• How were they constructed?
• Refugees as victim/fraud/privileged
• Government as cruel/corrupt/incompetent
• Immigration system as too lenient/too tough/too
  slow
• Discursive resources for government and NGOs no
  resources for refugees

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How will I analyze my data?
Setting up a Research Project

• What sort of data do I have micro or macro?
• What sort of categories do these data generate?
• Do these categories relate to my research
  question?
• Can I explain and justify my choice of
  categories?
• How will I know when to stop?   

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Exercise
Setting up a Research Project

• How could discourse analysis contribute to your
  area study?
• If you were to adopt discourse analysis how would
  you frame your research question?
• Which characteristics of your research site lend
  themselves to discourse analysis and which are
  likely to make it harder (if you havent already
  selected a site, consider a possible site)?
• What texts would you select? What data would you
  collect?
• How do you think you might analyse the data?

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Writing the Study Up
Setting up a Research Project

• What is the research question?
• Why did I choose the research site?
• What data did I collect and why?
• How did I analyze the data?
• How does the analysis address the research
  questions?
• What contributions does this research make?
• Make it interesting!!!