Memorable Quotes # 15: The Pentadecalogue of Discourse Analysis

(Book: Wood, L.A. & Kroger. R.O. (2000). Doing Discourse Analysis: Methods for Studying Action in Talk and Text. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.) 

1. Ask yourself how are you reading a text
2. Do not ignore the obvious
3. Ask yourself  how the literal meaning is used to do something
4. It is important to consider what is not there (the absence of talk is something)
5. Consider whether the critical issue is that something is included
6. Play with text (consider substitutions)
7. Look carefully at how the text is structured
8. Be alert for multiple functions of discourse
9. Doing DA is like writing a literature essay
10. You may need to develop new terms
11. Analyze the ways in which participants treat categories
12. Adopt a questioning stance: take nothing for granted, adopt a strategy of reversal
13. Look at the social implications of grammatical features
14. Your ideas are important (and how you justify your identification of patterns)
15. Give yourself permission to generate “results”