qualitative- discourse analysis

Question 1

What paradigm does it belong to?

Answer 1

social constructionist

Question 2

What is Discourse?

Answer 2

Discourse refers to any form of talk or text (and any forms of meaningful interaction between people, such as bodily movements or visual signs) (Remember the rainbow, or the colour pink, both discourse)

Question 3

2 types of discourse analysis

Answer 3

1. discursive psycology

2. Foucauldian Discourse Analysis

Question 4

Discursive Psychology

Answer 4

• Inspired by conversation analysis
• Interested in how speakers respond to each other
• Emphasizes the performative qualities of discourse
• Interested in negotiation of meaning in interpersonal interaction in every day contexts
• Speaker active agent

(immediate context)

Question 5

Foucauldian Discourse Analysis

Answer 5

• concerned with the broader discursive resources available to people
• the ways in which discourses construct subjectivity, selfhood and power
• speaker constrained by available subject positions

(broader social context)

Question 6

About Foucauldian Discourse Analysis (FDA)

Answer 6

Discourses facilitate and limit, enable and constrain, what can be said, by whom, where and when.

Make available certain ways-of-seeing the world and certain ways-of-being in the world.

Discourses offer subject positions:

e. g. Illness: Medical discourse, Self help, religious
- Subject positions are associated with rights and responsibilities in terms of what we can do or say (e.g. A patient must passively receive care)
- which have implications for subjectivity and experience
- Strongly linked to power

Dominant discourses often become “common sense” understandings
e.g. mother primary caregiver, father bread winner
Girls like pink, boys like blue

(Counter-discourses do eventually emerge)

Question 7

Steps in the research process (6)

Answer 7

1. research question
2. research design and data collection
3. transcription
4. coding
5. analysis interpretation
6. present findings

Question 8

1. Choosing a research question

Answer 8

• The research question will look at which discourses, systems of meaning, common sense ideas people use to make sense of their worlds
• And explore what drawing on these discourses “do” for participants.

Question 9

2. Designing your study

Answer 9

• Select text for analysis
• Discourse analysis can be carried out wherever there is meaning (any symbolic system) – do NOT just have to analyse Interview transcripts.

Question 10

3. Transcription

Answer 10

• Varying level of detail
• Discursive psychology research would use more detailed transcriptions, as every interaction is important.
• Even in FDA more detail can be helpful (pauses, laughs, sighs, not emotion)

Question 11

4. Coding & Analysis

Answer 11

No set way to code

Cyclical process, code, recode. Analyse, recode.

Question 12

things to identify when doing coding and analysis

Answer 12

1. Discursive Object
2. Discourses
3. Action Orientation
4. Positionings
5. Subjectivity

Question 13

IDENTIFY THE DISCURSIVE OBJECT:

Answer 13

• Object = the issue you’re studying
• Identify all the instances in your text where these objects occur in one way or another
• “fathering” “ASD/autism” “male/manhood/man/masculinity”
• Both explicit and implicit ways they appear
• Look at when they are spoken about but not named “what is not being said”

Question 14

IDENTIFY DISCOURSES

Answer 14

Differences in how objects are constructed:

• What are the various different ways the object (“fathering children with ASD”) has been constructed?
• Locate these various constructions within wider discourses (about fathering children with ASD) – masculinity and manhood discourses, discourses about fathering, disease discourses, psychological intervention discourse, father-son relationship discourses

Question 15

IDENTIFY: ACTION ORIENTATION

Answer 15

• What does the speaker gain from drawing on that particular discourse?
• What does the discourse “DO” for the speaker?

Question 16

Identify subject positionings

Answer 16

• Subject positions = NB part of FDA
• Certain discourses make available certain subject positioning – they allow for a certain repertoire of rights, responsibilities and power

Question 17

Subjectivity

Answer 17

• Discourses don’t only make available certain subject positions and ways of being, but they also determine how people feel about what they are doing.
• Discourse determines subjectivity

Question 18

The kinds of questions we are interested in FDA:

Answer 18

• What available discourses do people use to make sense of the subject under study?
• What do these discourses “do” for that person
• What subject positions do these discourses make available?
• What kinds of power do these subject positions offer?
• How do these discourses affect what people can/can’t do?
• How do these discourses affect how people subjectively feel about or experience the issue under study?