Discourse Analysis

Question 1

What is this?

Answer 1

The analysis of talk and text in their own right - text and language as a construction

Question 2

What is it concerned with?

Answer 2

The way that language constructs reality, and the way it manages to do things - or the way people manage to do things with language

Themes, actions and people can be talked about in all sorts of ways

Question 3

What do the different ways of talking have?

Answer 3

Different functions or effects - for example, you would say collateral damage - to give a certain effect

Question 4

What is it most interested in?

Answer 4

The inconsistency is of interest - everyday talk is untidy and inconsistent

If the second part of something is the real attitude, exclude the first part

Question 5

Why are people inconsistent?

Answer 5

Talk isn’t just a reflection of the ‘in the head’ but is also used to achieve things

the speaker isn’t simply expressing an attitude, but is doing something with words

Question 6

What can different versions of history do?

Answer 6

Be used to invoke different identities

Question 7

What are distinctions made between?

Answer 7

There are distinctions made between two groups of people

Question 8

What are the functions of the distinctions?

Answer 8

Legitimising different types of response for each social category - the boundaries can slip and slide

don’t want to exclude what people say when they express 2 different attitudes

Question 9

What are the guidelines for DA?

Answer 9

1. Formulating your research questions
2. Gathering material
3. Reading and re reading the text- get a sense of material, structure, order, content
4. Coding
5. Analysis

Question 10

What type of material can be analysed?

Answer 10

Anything:

interviews, newspapers, other pre existing texts, soundtrack recordings, social media material

Question 11

What does coding mean?

Answer 11

Selecting and organising data - not analyses itself, done before

Question 12

What do you do in analysis?

Answer 12

Ask: what things / people does the language serve to define or construct. What are the functions of talking about these things in this context. Technique: suggest other words of phrases that might have been used instead

Question 13

What are the 7 rhetorical devices?

Answer 13

Disclaimer 
Stake inoculation
Extreme case formulation
Category entitlement 
Passive voice
Three-part list
Identity claims

Question 14

What is disclaimer?

Answer 14

An explicit disavowal of the very stance or opinion a speaker subsequently advocates

Function: a speaker may use this when they know that what they are about to say may attract criticism. This way they deny the criticism before it can even be made.

‘I’m not being sexist, but I just think’

Question 15

What is stake inoculation?

Answer 15

A speaker rebuts the potential claim that they have a prior interest even before they are challenged on it - saying something first, to get rid of the suggestion they already had that view

Function: the speaker heads off the suggestion that they may just be praising the product for profit by presenting themselves as having been sceptical like anyone else would be. This makes their eventual endorsement of the product more believable.

‘at first, I was sceptical about the new cream, but after I tried it, I was convinced’

Question 16

What is extreme case formulation?

Answer 16

Semantically extreme word or phrase used to defend or justify a description or assessment, especially in case of challenge
Often involves exaggeration
Often using expressions including extreme terms such as all, none, most, every, least, absolutely, completely

non literal descriptions

Question 17

What is category entitlement?

Answer 17

Based on the fact that we accept that certain categories of people (e.g., ‘experts’) are entitled to make specific knowledge claims, so we give special credence to their accounts.

‘the psychologist told me my child is gifted’ - a parent presents this information as coming from a reliable source.
The psychologist belongs to the category of ‘expert’, and is thus is entitled to decide that the child is gifted.
Citing the psychologist builds the credibility of this parent’s claim - adds to the validity of your own claim

Question 18

What is passive voice?

Answer 18

Use of the passive voice – object and verb but weak, indeterminate subject – is a way to downplay the responsibility of the actor in relation to the verb - avoids mentioning who was responsible

Function: allows the speaker to avoid or even shift attributions of blame

Question 19

What is a three part list?

Answer 19

Lists of three sound particularly complete, satisfying and convincing - provides emphasis and serve to construct a picture of evidence building up

Question 20

What is an identity claim?

Answer 20

Identity as something done in talk to achieve various objectives - making identity claims to justify the claim you make

e.g. Angela constructs herself as an active person, through references in the way she talks

Question 21

When is interpretation correct?

Answer 21

All research methods involve interpretations - quantitative methods sort out issues of interpretation before, qualitative methods do it after

Question 22

What is Potter and Wetherell’s validity criteria?

Answer 22

We can make confidence in peoples claims by looking at participants orientation - if speakers treat constructions as different, then we can have confidence in doing so, shows that people have 2 different ways of talking, in different places - keeping them separate

Question 23

When are there problems according to Potter and Wetherell?

Answer 23

When speakers us the repertoires together - but they will use the truth will out device - the scientists were faced with a problem when the researchers confronted them with the contradictions in their accounts of science- TWOD was the solution

Question 24

What is the criteria for assessing validity?

Answer 24

Discuss your analysis with others. Do they read the text in the same way as you?

The written presentation (illustrative examples) itself allows readers to judge

Can you defend your analytic claims?

Question 25

How can you check for reliability?

Answer 25

The rhetorical devices have specific and identifiable features that you can other analysts can refer to for consistency - check the consistency

Question 26

What are the advantages?

Answer 26

DA gives you the tools to study how people do things with words, how language constructs reality

Hence useful for studying power (and being critical) - critical psychologists like it

Can study almost any topic in psychology:
Prejudice
Attribution
Memory
Identity…

Can use a wide variety of types of data (secondary data as well as primary data).

Useful approach - analysing natural conversation to identify words, help understand how people communicate

Question 27

What are the disadvantages?

Answer 27

DA doesn’t allow for the usual kind of generalizations you might make in other kinds of research - can’t compare people

Is discourse analysis the appropriate approach for the questions you want answered? (Are your questions legitimate?)

Relativism. If we can only comment on the language rather than what it supposedly represents, how can we have moral or political commitments to how the world should be?

Question 28

What is DA the study of?

Answer 28

Talk as action

Question 29

What are the discursive devices used for?

Answer 29

In arguments to strengthen claims