(Antaki, C., Billig, M.G., Edwards, D. and Potter, J.A., (2003) Discourse Analysis Means Doing Analysis: A Critique of Six Analytic Shortcomings, Discourse Analysis Online, 1
Available from: http://www.shu.ac.uk/daol/articles/v1/n1/a1/antaki2002002-paper.html)
In my opinion, this is a great article, extremely clear, helpful, and well written. Take that, Paul!
“Our aim here is […] to highlight some methodological troubles that are visible from whatever discourse perspective one adopts.”
“In addition, it might help prevent researchers from producing work that might lend credence to the quantitative researcher’s dismissal that, in discourse analysis, ‘anything goes’. ”
“What we shall do in this paper, then, is to identify things that might superficially give the
appearance of conducting discourse analysis in social psychology, but do not in fact do
so. We have collected together six such non-analyses:”
(1) under-analysis through summary: “Transcription prepares the data for analysis. However, it is not analysis in itself.”
(2) under-analysis through taking sides: “Position-taking – whether analysts align themselves with, or critically distance themselves from, the speakers whom they are studying – is not analysis in itself.”
(3) under-analysis through over-quotation or through isolated quotation: “Quotation, like summarising, is not discourse analysis in itself. […] The over-quotation may impede certain forms of discourse analysis by removing utterances from their discursive context.”
(4) the circular identification of discourses and mental constructs: “the data cannot be left to ‘speak for itself’, as if a series of quotes is sufficient in itself to show the existence of the repertoire, ideology or discourse. […] The discursive psychologist should resist positing mental entities and should concentrate upon examining the use of psychological language in discourse.”
(5) false survey: “There is a danger of extrapolating from one's data to the world at large.”
(6) analysis that consists in simply spotting features: “The recognition of features does not constitute analysis. […]What is required is to show what the feature does, how it is used, what it is used to do, how it is handled sequentially and rhetorically, and so on. […] Good analysis always moves convincingly back and forth between the general and the specific.”
“Perhaps it is safe to say that analysis means a close engagement with one's text or transcripts, and the illumination of their meaning and significance through insightful and technically sophisticated work. In a word, Discourse Analysis means Doing Analysis.”
One question. The article says that:
“One would consult the relevant previous research on all these conversational moves and apply the accumulated insights to the present data.”
Where can we find such a wonderful “repository”?
The article also notes that:
“Conversation and critical discourse analysts have, over the past twenty-five years, noticed and labelled a wide variety of conversational and rhetorical procedures. Anyone engaging in these sorts of analyses should properly acquaint himself or herself with such work. They should be able to recognize these conversational features in data extracts. The same is true of rhetorical tropes in printed persuasive materials and so on.”
Where can we start from?
The references lists in the articles and books we've read this semester, journals in the field, seminal works by the key scholars in the field, see the resources pages and links in Blackboard. This is where database searching, key word searching, reading widely and talking with others becomes key.
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