M.Lucero and M.Spyridakis, Spetses, June 2017 Discourse Analysis

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 (Gregory et al. 2009, 167). 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

Remember: Utterances do not only say things, they do things. 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 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 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. 3rd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications. Miles, Matthew B. and A. Michael Huberman. 1994. An expanded sourcebook: Qualitative data analysis. 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.