Getting technical: discourse analysis in ten steps
So you have formulated a
research question, have collected source material, and are now ready to roll up
your sleeves and dig into your sources. But how do you make sure that you have
covered all your bases and that you will later be able to make a good case for
yourself and your work? Here are ten work stepsthat will help you
conduct a systematic and professional discourse analysis.
1) Establish the context
Before you start
chiselling away at your source material, jot down where the material comes from
and how it fits into the big picture. You should ask yourself what
the social and historical context is in which each of your
sources was produced. Write down what language your source is written in, what
country and place it is from, who wrote it (and when), and who published it
(and when). Also try to have a record of when and how you got your hands on
your sources, and to explain where others might find copies. Finally, find out
whether your sources are responses to any major event, whether they
tie into broader debates, and how they were received at
the time of publication.
2) Explore the
production process
You have already
recorded who wrote and published your sources, but you still need to do a more
thorough background check. Try to find additional information on
the producer of your source material, as well as their
institutional and personal background. For example, if you are analysing news
articles, take a look at the kind of newspaper that the articles are from
(Jäger 2004: 175): Who are the author and the editorial staff, what is the
general political position of the paper, and what is its affiliation with other
organizations? Are any of the people who are involved in the production process
known for their journalistic style or their political views? Is there any
information on the production expenditures and general finances of the paper?
Do you know who the general target audience of the paper is? In many cases,
media outlets themselves provide some of this information online, for instance
in the “about” sections of their websites. In other cases, you will find such
information in the secondary academic literature. Don’t hesitate to write the
editors an email or call them up: personal interviews can be a great way to
explore production backgrounds.
Once you have
established the institutional background, take notes on the medium and
the genre you are working with. Some scholars go as far to argue that “the
medium is the message” (McLuhan 1964/2001), or in other words that the medium
in which information is presented is the crucial element that shapes meaning.
While I am skeptical of such extreme technological determinism, I do
agree that the medium matters: reading an article online is not the
same as reading it in a printed newspaper, or in a hardcover collection of
essays. Make sure to identify the different media types in which your source
appeared, and to also be clear about the version that you yourself are
analysing.
For instance, the layout of
a newspaper article and its position on the page will be different in a print
edition than in an online edition. The latter will also offer comments, links,
multi-media content, etc. All of these factors frame the meaning of
the actual text and should be considered in an analysis. This may also mean
that you should think about the technical quality and readability of your
source, for instance by looking at paper quality (or resolution for online
sources), type set, etc. You should also take notes on the length of your
source (number of pages and/or words) and any additional features of
the medium that might contribute to or shape meaning (such as images).
Finally, ask yourself
what genre your source belongs to. Are you analysing an
editorial comment, and op-ed, a reader’s letter, a commentary, a news item, a
report, an interview, or something else? Establishing this background
information will later help you assess what genre-specific mechanism your
source deploys (or ignores) to get its message across.
3) Prepare your material
for analysis
In order to analyse the
actual text, it is wise to prepare it in a way that will allow you to work with
the source, home in on specific details, and make precise references later. If
you are working with a hard copy I would recommend making a number
of additional copies of your source material, so that you can
write on these versions and mark important features. If you haven’t
already, try to digitize your source or get a digital copy.
Then add references that others can use to follow your work
later: add numbers for lines, headers, paragraphs, figures, or any other
features that will help you keep your bearings.
4) Code your material
When you code data,
it means that you are assigning attributes to specific units of analysis, such
as paragraphs, sentences, or individual words. Think of how many of us tag online
information like pictures, links, or articles. Coding is simply an academic
version of this tagging process.
For instance, you might
be analysing a presidential speech to see what globalization discourse it draws
from. It makes sense to mark all statements in the speech that deal with
globalization and its related themes (or discourse strands). Before
you start with this process, you need to come up with your coding
categories. The first step is to outline a few such categories
theoretically: based on the kind of question you are asking, and your knowledge
of the subject matter, you will already have a few key themes in mind that you
expect to find, for instance “trade”, “migration”, “transportation”,
“communication”, and so on. A thorough review of the secondary
literature on your topic will likely offer inspiration. Write down
your first considerations, and also write down topics that you think might be
related to these key themes. These are your starting categories.
You then go over the
text to see if it contains any of these themes. Take notes on the ones that are
not included, since you may have to delete these categories later. Other
categories might be too broad, so try breaking them down into sub-categories.
Also, the text may include interesting themes that you did not expect to find,
so jot down any such additional discourse strands. At the end of this first
review, revise your list of coding categories to reflect your findings. If you
are working with several documents, repeat the process for each of them, until
you have your final list of coding categories. This is what Mayring (2002: 120)
calls evolutionary coding, since your categories evolve from
theoretical considerations into a full-fledged operational list based
on empirical data.
How the actual coding
process works will depend on the tools you use. You can code paper-based
sources by highlighting text sections in different colours, or by jotting down
specific symbols. If you are working with a computer, you can similarly
highlight text sections in a word processor. In either case, the risk is that
you will not be able to represent multiple categories adequately, for instance
when a statement ties into three or four discourse strands at once. You could
mark individual words, but this might not be ideal if you want to see how the
discourse works within the larger sentence structure, and how discourse strands
overlap.
A real alternative is
using other types of software. If you have access to professional
research programmes like NVivo, then the software
already has built-in coding mechanisms that you can customize and use. There is
also open-source software available, for instance the Mac programme TAMS, but I
have not tested their functionality. However, even if you only have regular
office tools at your disposal, such as Microsoft’s Office or a Mac
equivalent, there are at least two ways in which you can code material.
The first is to copy
your text into an Excel table. Place the text in one column
and use the next column to add the coding categories. You’ll of course have to
decide where the line-breaks should be. A sensible approach is to place each
sentence of your original text on a new line, but you could also choose smaller
units of text.
Another tool that
provides coding assistance is Microsoft OneNote 2010, or the Mac
equivalent Growly Notes.
In OneNote, you can right click anywhere in the text and select
“tag” to assign a category to any sentence. You can also customize your tags,
create new ones, and easily search and monitor your coding categories and
activities. The downside is that you can only tag full sentences, not single
words or phrases, but depending on your intentions, this may not be a crucial
drawback.
5) Examine the structure
of the text
Now that you have
prepared your materials and have coded the discourse strands, it is time to
look at the structural features of the texts. Are there
sections that overwhelmingly deal with one discourse? Are there ways in which
different discourse strands overlap in the text? See if you can identify how
the argument is structured: does the text go through several issues one by one?
Does it first make a counter-factual case, only to then refute that case and make
the main argument? You should at this point also consider how the headers and
other layout features guide the argument, and what role
the introduction and conclusionplay in the overall
scheme of things.
6) Collect and examine
discursive statements
Once you have a good
idea of the macro-features of your text, you can zoom in on the individual
statements, or discourse fragments. A good way to do this is to
collect all statements with a specific code, and to examine what they have to
say on the respective discourse strand. This collection of statements will
allow you to map out what “truths” the text establishes on each major topic.
7) Identify cultural
references
You have already
established what the context of your source material is. Now think about how
the context informs the argument. Does your material contain references to
other sources, or imply knowledge of another subject matter? What meaning does
the text attribute to such other sources? Exploring these questions will help
you figure out what function intertextuality serves in light
of the overall argument.
8) Identify linguistic
and rhetorical mechanisms
The next step in your
analysis is likely going to be the most laborious, but also the most
enlightening when it comes to exploring how a discourse works in detail. You
will need to identify how the various statements function at the level
of language. In order to do this, you may have to use additional copies of
your text for each work-step, or you may need to create separate coding
categories for your digital files. Here are some of the things you should be on
the lookout for:
·
Word
groups: does the text
deploy words that have a common contextual background? For instance, the
vocabulary may be drawn directly from military language, or business language,
or highly colloquial youth language. Take a closer look at nouns, verbs, and
adjectives in your text and see if you find any common features. Such
regularities can shed light on the sort of logic that the text implies. For
example, talking about a natural disaster in the language of war creates a very
different reasoning than talking about the same event in religious terms.
·
Grammar
features: check who or what
the subjects and objects in the various statements are. Are there any
regularities, for instance frequently used pronouns like “we” and “they”? If
so, can you identify who the protagonists and antagonists are? A look at
adjectives and adverbs might tell you more about judgements that the text
passes on these groups. Also, take a closer look at the main and auxiliary
verbs that the text uses, and check what tense they appear in. Particularly
interesting are active versus passive phrases – does the text delete actors
from its arguments by using passive phrases? A statement like “we are under
economic pressure” is very different from “X puts us under economic pressure”…
particularly if “X” is self-inflicted. Passive phrases and impersonal chains of
nouns are a common way to obscure relationships behind the text and shirk
responsibility. Make such strategies visible through your analysis.
·
Rhetorical
and literary figures: see if you can
identify and mark any of the following five elements in your text: allegories,
metaphors, similes, idioms, and proverbs. Take a look at how they are deployed
in the service of the overall argument. Inviting the reader to entertain
certain associations, for instance in the form of an allegory, helps construct
certain kinds of categories and relations, which in turn shape the argument.
For instance, if I use a simile that equates the state with a parent, and the
citizens with children, then I am not only significantly simplifying what is
actually a very complex relationship, I am also conjuring up categories and
relationships that legitimize certain kinds of politics, for instance strict
government intervention in the social sphere. Once you have checked for
the five elements listed above, follow up by examining additional rhetorical
figures to see how these frame the meaning of specific statements. Things to
look for include parallelisms, hyperboles, tri-colons, synecdoches, rhetorical
questions, and anaphora, to name only the most common.
·
Direct
and indirect speech: does the text
include quotes? If so, are they paraphrased or are they cited as direct speech?
In either case, you should track down the original phrases to see what their
context was, and what function they now play in your source material.
·
Modalities: see if the text includes any statements on
what “should” or “could” be. Such phrases may create a sense of urgency, serve
as a call to action, or imply hypothetical scenarios.
·
Evidentialities: lastly, are there any phrases in the text
that suggest factuality? Sample phrases might include “of course”, “obviously”,
or “as everyone knows”. A related question then is what kinds of “facts” the
text actually presents in support of its argument. Does the text report
factuality, actively demonstrate it, or merely suggested it as self-evident?
One of the strongest features of discourse is how it “naturalizes” certain
statements as “common sense” or “fact”, even if the statements are actually controversial
(and in discourse theory, all statements are controversial). Be on the look-out
for such discursive moves.
9) Interpret the data
You now have all the
elements of your analysis together, but the most important question still
remains: what does it all mean? In your interpretation, you
need to tie all of your results together in order to explain that the discourse
is about, and how it works. This means combing your knowledge of structural
features and individual statements, and then placing those findings into the
broader context that you established at the beginning. Throughout this process,
keep the following questions in mind: who created the material
you are analysing? What is their position on the topic you examined? How do
their arguments draw from and in turn contribute to commonly accepted knowledge
of the topic at the time and in the place that this argument was made? And
maybe most importantly: who might benefit from the discourse that your sources
construct?
10) Present your
findings
Once you have the answer
to your original question, it is time to get your results across to
your target audience. If you have conducted a good analysis, then you now have
a huge amount of notes from which you can build your presentation, paper, or
thesis. Make sure to stress the relevance, and to move through your
analysis based on the issues that you want to present. Always
ask yourself: what is interesting about my findings, and why should anyone
care? A talk or a paper that simply lists one discourse feature after another
is tedious to follow, so try to focus on making a compelling case.
You can then add evidencefrom your work as needed, for instance by
adding original and translated examples to illustrate your point. For some
academic papers, particularly graduation theses, you may want to compile the
full account of your data analysis in an appendix or some
other separate file so that your assessors can check your work.
Mind the limitations:
Discourse analysis
offers a powerful toolbox for analysing political communication, but it also
has its pitfalls. Aside from being very work-intensive,
the idea that you only need to follow a certain number of steps to get your
results can be misleading. A methodology is
always only as good as your question. If your question does not
lend itself to this sort of analysis, or if many of the steps I list above do
not apply to you, then come up with an approach that suits your project. Don’t
be a methodologist: someone who jumps at a set of methods and
applies them to everything in a blind fit of activism. Always remain
critical of your own work.
This means being mindful
of the shortcomings in your approach, so that you do not end up making claims
that your material does not support. A common mistake is to
claim that a discourse analysis shows what people think or believe (or worse:
what entire societies think or believe). Discourse analysis is a form of
content analysis. It is not a tool to analyse the impact of media on audience
members. No amount of discourse analysis can provide adequate evidence
on what goes on in people’s heads.
What we can learn from a
discourse analysis is how specific actors construct an argument,
and how this argument fits into wider social practices. More
importantly, we can demonstrate with confidence what kind of statements actors
try to establish as self-evident and true. We can
show with precision what rhetorical methods they picked to
communicate those truths in ways they thought would be effective, plausible,
or even natural. And we can reveal how their statements and the
frameworks of meaning they draw from proliferate through
communication practices.
REFERENCES:
Chilton, Paul
(2004). Analyzing Political Discourse – Theory and Practice. London:
Arnold.
Fairclough, Norman
(1995). Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language. Harlow:
Pearson Education Limited.
Jäger, Siegfried
(2004). Kritische Diskursanalyse. Eine Einführung. (Discourse Analysis.
An Introduction).4th ed., Münster: UNRAST-Verlag.
Mayring, Philipp
(2002). Einführung in die Qualitative Sozialforschung – Eine Anleitung
zu qualitativem Denken (Introduction to Qualitative Social Science Research –
Instruction Manual to Qualitative Thinking).5th ed., Basel: Beltz Verlag.
McLuhan, Marshall
(1964/2001). Understanding Media. New York: Routledge
Classics.
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