Discourse Analysis Means Doing Analysis: A Critique Of Six Analytic Shortcomings
Charles Antaki, Michael Billig, Derek Edwards, Jonathan Potter
Discourse and Rhetoric Group
Department of Social Sciences
Loughborough University
Loughborough
Leicestershire, LE11 3TU
C.Antaki@lboro.ac.uk
http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/ss/centres/dargindex.htm

Abstract: A number of ways of treating talk and textual data are identified which fall short of discourse analysis. They are: (1) under-analysis through summary; (2) under-analysis through taking sides; (3) under-analysis through over-quotation or through isolated quotation; (4) the circular identification of discourses and mental constructs; (5) false survey; and (6) analysis that consists in simply spotting features. We show, by applying each of these to an extract from a recorded interview, that none of them actually analyse the data. We hope that illustrating shortcomings in this way will encourage further development of rigorous discourse analysis in social psychology.

Keywords: discourse analysis, qualitative methods, research methodology

Multimedia: MP3 recording from which example transcript is taken

http://extra.shu.ac.uk/daol/articles/v1/n1/a1/antaki2002002-paper.html