What is Discourse Analysis? An Introduction & Guide
Discourse analysis is a qualitative research method for studying “language in context.”[1] The process goes beyond analyzing words and sentences, establishing a deeper context about how language is used to engage in actions and form social identity.
In Gee’s (2011) view, language is always used from a perspective and always occurs within a context. A chat with a police officer differs from one with a close friend. Politicians often use vague double-talk to mask contradictions between their actions and public stance. Even a car's user manual follows specific structural conventions.
Contextualizing how we use language provides insights into its underlying power dynamics and real-world consequences. That’s where discourse analysis comes in.
What is Discourse Analysis?
Discourse analysis (DA) is a broad term for various qualitative methods that explore the structure and expression of language within its social and cultural context. It looks at the linguistic content (what's said) and language use (how it's used) in a given text to convey meaning in different social settings.
By “going beyond the word or sentence,” discourse analysis aims to grasp how language structures both texts and social contexts. [2,3] The main goal of this qualitative research approach is to provide a deeper understanding and appreciation of language and “how it becomes meaningful to users.”[4]
So, discourse analysts explore how relationships between people can shape the language they use. And also how language presents different perspectives and understandings of the world, helping us understand how it can help create and maintain social reality, power relations, and even our own identities.
A discourse analyst may examine how people in a given setting use a particular word to understand their upbringing or other people's influences on them. Likewise, qualitative researchers may analyze words written centuries ago to understand the writer’s situation and get broader evidence about the writer’s society.
Here are some questions that discourse analysts might ask:
How does language construct identity in different contexts?
How does language negotiate or influence power?
How does language create and maintain reality?
How do frames of reference influence language interpretation?
How can language promote social change?
By posing questions that delve beneath the surface of language, you can uncover the subtleties that help us comprehend the power and influence of it.
Key Concepts of Discourse Analysis
Some of the core concepts in discourse analysis include:
Context: Discourse analysts are interested in how the context of a communicative event affects the meaning of the language used. For example, the meaning of "home" will differ depending on whether it is spoken to a family member, a friend, or a stranger.
Power: Discourse analysts also examine how power relations are reflected in language use. For example, how a manager speaks to an employee will likely differ from how the employee speaks to the manager.
Identity: Discourse can also be used to construct and maintain different identities. For example, how a politician speaks in a campaign speech tends to differ from how they speak to their constituents in a private meeting.
What is Discourse?
Before continuing, let’s establish what “discourse” really means.
Discourse is not just language. It’s the way we use language to communicate with each other in social situations. It is a way to share our thoughts and ideas, build relationships, establish culture, influence others, and create meaning in our world.
Think of discourse as the language tailored to social contexts. On one hand, language is a tool to initiate social change or achieve specific objectives. For example, in political discourse, people use persuasive language. A discourse analyst would study what’s said in these situations to achieve particular outcomes, such as winning an election.
But language is not limited to achieving grand objectives. It’s also intertwined with our daily interactions, leading discourse analysts to study how it’s used. Body language, pauses, and eye contact (among others) help us position ourselves in regular conversations with others in day-to-day life and to make meaning of the world.
Discourse analysis provides a lens through which we can view the many functions of language. This includes shaping prevailing power structures, constructing societal narratives, influencing our everyday dialogues, molding opinions, and more.
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What Are Types of Discourse Analysis?
Discourse analysis is a broad, interdisciplinary field that includes various qualitative methods for studying language use. Due to the ever-evolving nature of the field, scholars have varying opinions on the specific number of discourse analysis types.
Some common approaches to discourse analysis include:
Narrative Analysis
Narrative analysis is the study of how stories are told and how they shape our understanding of the world. Narrative analysts are interested in story structure, content, and function. They may also be interested in how stories are told in different social contexts and how they are used to construct and maintain social identities and power relations.
For example, you might study how the story of Christopher Columbus is told in different cultures and how it shapes people's understanding of heroism.
Conversation Analysis (CA)
Conversation analysis studies everyday conversation. CA researchers are interested in the micro-level details of conversation, such as turn-taking (speaking vs. listening), gaze (eye contact), and body language. They may also be interested in how conversation is used to achieve different social goals, such as building relationships, managing conflict, and exchanging information.
If you’re a conversation analyst, you could study how people use turn-taking and gaze to negotiate social status in a job interview.
Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA)
Critical discourse analysis focuses on the relationship between language and power. CDA researchers are interested in how language is used to construct and maintain social inequalities. They may also be interested in how language can be used to challenge and resist social oppression.
You might study how politicians use language to construct and maintain social divisions in a campaign speech. Think “us vs. them” or “haves vs. have-nots.”
Foucauldian Discourse Analysis
Foucauldian discourse analysis is a type of CDA based on Michel Foucault's theories. Foucault argued that discourse is not simply a tool for communication but that it also plays a role in shaping our knowledge and understanding of the world. Foucauldian discourse analysts are interested in how discourse is used to construct and maintain social norms and power relations.
If you’re a Foucauldian discourse analyst, you might study how medical discourse constructs and maintains the power of doctors over patients.
Rhetorical Analysis
Rhetorical analysis examines how language is used to persuade, inform, and entertain. It looks at the speaker or writer's purpose, audience, and the strategies they use to achieve their purpose. They may also be interested in the use of rhetorical devices, such as metaphors, similes, and rhetorical questions.
In MLK’s “I Have A Dream” speech, he uses the metaphor of a "promissory note" to expose the American government's hypocrisy. A rhetorical analyst may study how metaphors are used in speeches to appeal to an audience's emotions.
Ethnography of Communication
Ethnography of communication is a research approach that combines ethnography and discourse analysis methods. Ethnographers of communication study how language is used in different cultural and social contexts. They may be interested in how language is used to construct and maintain relationships, negotiate social meaning, and perform social identities.
An ethnographer of communication might study how people use language to build relationships and negotiate social meaning in a workplace setting.
Pragmatics
Pragmatics is the study of how language is used in context. Pragmatists are interested in how we use language to convey meaning beyond the literal meaning of the words we use. They may be interested in the role of factors such as intonation, body language, and shared knowledge in communication.
A pragmatist might study how speakers use intonation and body language like eye-rolling to convey sarcasm or politeness.
Variation Analysis
Variation analysis studies how language varies across different social groups and contexts. It is interested in factors contributing to language variation, such as age, region, social class, and gender. They may also be interested in the implications of language variation for social identity and power relations.
Tomayto or tomahtoe? A variation analyst might study how the pronunciation of the word "tomato" varies across different regions of the United States.
These approaches do occasionally cross paths. Narrative analysis and critical discourse analysis can both be used to examine how language is used to construct identity. Conversation analysis and ethnography of communication can both be used to examine how language is used to negotiate power relations in social interactions.
While there is overlap between these sub-types, each maintains its unique focus and priorities, offering different prisms through which to examine language use.
Where Different Discourse Analysis Types Fit
In Gee’s view, all sub-methods of discourse analysis fit within the two broader approaches to discourse analysis: 1) language-in-use and 2) socio-political.
Language-In-Use Approaches (How It’s Used)
You choose language-in-use approaches to focus on the linguistics of language use, such as grammar, syntax, phonology, and structure. They aim to identify and analyze how these finer language details are used and manipulated in social contexts.
Lee & Bhuyan (2013) show how conversation analysts analyze conversational markers by coding conversation transcripts. They aim to code conversational markers according to their function (e.g., turn-taking, overlap, exhalation, disagreement) and try to grasp how this language is used to negotiate meaning and construct knowledge.
Figure 1. Transcription symbols in conversation analysis (Lee & Bhuyan, 2013, pp. 98-130)
Socio-Political Approaches (What’s Said)
Socio-political approaches to discourse analysis take a more philosophical stance. They are primarily concerned with how language constructs and sustains societal power dynamics. It's important to note that while politics is one focal point of socio-political methods, these approaches have broader applications.
For instance, discourse analysts may use socio-political methods, like rhetorical analysis, to study climate change discourse in scientific contexts. Supran and Oreskes (2021) examined 180 ExxonMobil climate-change communications promoting the "Fossil Fuel Savior" (FFS). They revealed how the corporation employs climate "risk" rhetoric and consumer "demand" to downplay climate change, normalize fossil-fuel consumption, and shift responsibility to individuals.
Applying rhetorical analysis allowed the researchers to reveal the patterned framing of climate change in scientific discourse, whether as a scientific, political, or moral issue.
Figure 2. Graphical abstract of Fossil Fuel Savior (FFS) Frame (Supran & Oreskes, 2021, pp. 696–719)
Here's a summary of how the specific approaches align with these broader categories:
Language-in-use approaches:
Narrative analysis
Conversation analysis
Pragmatics
Socio-political approaches:
Critical discourse analysis (CDA)
Foucauldian discourse analysis
Ethnography of communication
Rhetorical analysis
| Approach | Type |
|---|---|
| Narrative analysis | Language-in-use |
| Conversation analysis | Language-in-use |
| Pragmatics | Language-in-use |
| Critical discourse analysis (CDA) | Socio-political |
| Foucauldian discourse analysis | Socio-political |
| Ethnography of communication | Socio-political |
| Rhetorical Analysis | Socio-political |
When to Use Discourse Analysis
Discourse analysis is used in linguistics, psychology, sociology, anthropology, communication, education, and other fields.
Here are some common objectives of discourse analysis:
To study how language creates and maintains social identities.
To study how language creates and maintains power relations.
To examine how language is shaped by and reflects social and cultural values.
To analyze how language is used to construct and maintain social reality.
To identify and understand the different ways in which language can be used to persuade, inform, or entertain.
To study the relationship between language and other social phenomena, such as education, employment, and the media.
Materials For Discourse Analysis
You can apply DA to any instance of written or oral language, including non-verbal aspects of communication like tones and gestures. Some examples include:
Written texts
Books, newspapers, periodicals, magazines, brochures, advertisements, business and government documents, websites, forums, social media posts, and comments.
Spoken texts:
Interviews, conversations, lectures, sermons, political speeches, and courtroom testimony.
The following sections will cover how to analyze your materials for discourse analysis.
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How to Do Discourse Analysis
There is no clear-cut method for conducting discourse analysis, as several approaches exist. However, here are some fundamental steps for conducting a research study involving discourse analysis.
SETUP
Step 1: Determine Your Research Approach
The first step is to choose a discourse analysis approach that aligns with your research questions and objectives. Consider the broader context of your study, such as the field you are working in and the type of data you will analyze when choosing an approach. You can choose any of the seven subtypes listed above – or other options.
Step 2: Gather Data (Analytical & Contextual)
Once you have chosen an approach, you collect data. The type of data you collect will depend on your research questions and the approach you are using. Common data sources include interviews, surveys, social media posts, news articles, and academic papers. You can find a comprehensive list of material options in previous sections.
You should also explore how the material was produced and the medium (political speech, magazine, interview, etc.). By holistically considering all these elements, you gain a better contextual understanding of your data.
Step 3: Prepare Your Data
Once you have collected your data, you should organize it for efficient analysis. If you are using hard copies, make additional annotated versions. If you use digital data, create a system for tagging and organizing your files.
The interpretive steps in discourse analysis can be time-consuming. It helps to organize your data for easy reference by establishing a data-tracking process. There isn't a universal approach.
For reference, language-in-use methods tend to annotate small text chunks for linguistic features, numbering each line of text as a reference marker. Socio-political approaches tend to use larger data sets to uncover larger, overarching ideas. You can organize the process manually by pen and paper, using an Excel spreadsheet or word processor or QDA software like Delve to streamline your data analysis.
Systemizing the research process will make it easier to navigate to the relevant passages in your data during analysis. It also lets you start devising how to present reader-friendly results in the write-up. Sunderland (2018) offers a simple outline of how one could organize data but warns things are not always as neat as this table.
Figure 3. An example template for organizing discourse analysis (Sunderland, 2018, pp. 9 - 28)
ANALYSIS
Step 4: Contextualize Your Data
Your data was not created in a vacuum. Think back to our earlier example of the critical discourse analyst studying centuries-old texts. They use language as the key to unlock broader insights into the author's society, achieving a better understanding of the data's complete context. Your data should include social, historical, and cultural background, as well as the source's origin, language, and audience reception.
Here, the process actually began in step 2. Collecting information about material production and its presentation medium is crucial for putting your data into context.
In this section, we've focused on discourse analysis as an example. Keep in mind that the approach might look entirely different when dealing with language-in-use methods that stay much closer to the text, such as conversation analysis or narrative analysis.
Step 5: Examine the Structure of the Text
After contextualizing your data, you analyze how the author has organized their ideas and arguments. This forms its “structure,” which can provide further context.
Look for key sections where the main ideas are concentrated, and understand how they relate to one another. You also want to analyze how the author or speaker presents arguments through headings, formatting, introductions, and conclusions.
For example, you can identify the key arguments that the author is making and how they are supporting those arguments. You can also identify the different viewpoints that are represented in the text and how the author is negotiating those viewpoints.
Understanding the text structure, you can better understand the author's purpose and meaning. It also helps improve the rigor of your qualitative analysis and results.
Tips for analyzing text structure:
Read the text carefully and take notes. As you read, pay attention to the author's main ideas and how they are organized. You may find it helpful to take notes or memos on the key sections of the text and their connections to each other.
Look for signal words and phrases. Signal words and phrases are used to indicate the structure of a text. For example, words like "first," "second," and "third" often indicate a chronological order. Words like "however," "on the other hand," and "in contrast" often indicate a compare/contrast structure.
Use graphic organizers. Graphic organizers can be helpful for visualizing the structure of a text. Some common graphic organizers include flow charts, co-occurrence matrices, Venn diagrams, and mind maps.
Step 6: Collect and Analyze Discursive Statements
After coding and analyzing text structure, you move on to collect and dissect discursive statements. Let’s start here: what is a discursive statement?
Discursive statements are the basic building blocks of discourse. They are coherent units of meaning that are used to construct and maintain social realities. Discursive statements can be simple or complex, but they all share a common feature: they are sentences or phrases used to convey ideas or arguments on a topic.
A discursive statement about climate change might be: "Climate change is a real and serious threat to our planet." This statement is coherent and meaningful, and it expresses a clear position on the issue of climate change.
Equally important are discourse strands, which are coherent sets of discursive statements that are related to a particular topic or issue. They are often used to position a speaker or writer in relation to a particular audience. Discourse strands are the overarching themes arising when grouping related discursive statements.
A climate change discourse strand might include discursive statements like: "Human activities cause climate change," "Climate change has global negative impacts," and "Climate change is a real and serious threat to our planet."
This discourse strand is also coherent and meaningful, and it positions the speaker or writer as someone who is concerned about climate change and believes that action needs to be taken to address it.
Tips for using discursive statements:
Uncover key messages in a text.
Grasp the author's positioning concerning the audience.
Reveal underlying values and assumptions.
Understand how text constructs social reality.
Identify discourse strands.
If you’re new to discourse analysis, start by analyzing discursive statements in different texts like news articles or political speeches. This sharpens your ability to identify and analyze these statements and deepens your grasp of discourse in various contexts.
Lenses For Analyzing Discursive Statements
Gee offers 28 lenses or “tools” to help dissect discursive sentences.[5] He suggests that by using different lenses to frame and interpret data, we can better understand how language is used to communicate, persuade, and construct meaning.
Here, you want to build upon the context gleaned during steps 3 and 4. Remember that qualitative analysis is an iterative process. The more you can contextualize your research and understand all frames of reference, the more rigorous your results become.
Here are some of the different lenses to choose from, each offering a unique perspective on the structure and meaning of these sentences:
Identify Linguistic and Rhetorical Mechanisms: Linguistic and rhetorical mechanisms are what authors use to create and convey meaning in texts. These tools/lenses include word groups, grammar features, rhetorical figures, direct and indirect speech, modalities, and evidentiality.
Word groups are combinations of words that have a specific meaning. For example, the phrase "climate change" is a word group that refers to a specific phenomenon.
Grammar features are the rules that govern how words are combined to form sentences. For example, the grammar feature of subject-verb agreement ensures that the subject and verb of a sentence agree in number.
Rhetorical figures are special ways of using language to create a particular effect. For example, the rhetorical figure of simile is used to compare two things using the words "like" or "as."
Direct and indirect speech are two ways of reporting what someone has said. Direct speech is when you repeat someone's words exactly, while indirect speech is when you report what they said without using their exact words.
Modalities are words that express the speaker's or writer's attitude towards the truth of a statement. For example, the modal verb "may" expresses uncertainty, while the modal verb "must" expresses certainty.
Evidentiality is a way of expressing how the speaker or writer knows something. For example, the word "saw" expresses that the speaker or writer witnessed something directly, while the word "heard" expresses that the speaker or writer heard something from someone else.
Subject Lens: Explore why speakers choose specific subjects or topics and how they convey their message about them. Consider whether alternative subjects could have been chosen and why they weren't. Analyze how information is organized in terms of subjects and predicates. Ask questions such as: "Why did the speaker select this subject?" and "How does this choice affect the message?"
Intonation Lens: Investigate how a speaker's intonation contour, which refers to the rising and falling pitch patterns in speech, influences the meaning of their utterance. Identify the idea units used, the placement of intonational focus (the part of the utterance that carries the most emphasis), and what is foregrounded or backgrounded. Examine the attitudinal and emotional meanings conveyed through intonation. When dealing with written texts, read them aloud to determine the necessary intonation contours for a complete understanding. Ask questions like: "How does the speaker's intonation, or pitch patterns, affect the message?" and "What emotions or attitudes are conveyed through intonation?"
Frame Lens: After completing the discourse analysis, revisit the contextual aspects and consider additional contextual information that may alter your analysis. Delve deeper into the context to uncover relevant elements that may have initially been overlooked. Ask yourself: "Is there more to the context that could change my analysis?"
Doing and Not Just Saying Lens: Analyze how discursive sentences are employed to achieve specific purposes, such as persuasion, information, or entertainment. Look beyond the explicit content to understand the underlying intentions of the speaker, who may have multiple objectives. Consider questions like: "What is the speaker trying to accomplish beyond conveying information?" and "Are there multiple layers of intention in the communication?"
Stanza Lens: Study the organization and structure of discursive sentences within individual sentences and larger texts. Stanzas refer to distinct sections of text within a longer communication. Identify stanzas and their clustering within extended communication to aid in organizing your interpretation of the data. Questions to consider include: "How are discursive sentences organized within the text?" and "Do stanzas provide a structural framework for the communication?"
Activities Building Lens: Examine how discursive sentences contribute to the construction and maintenance of social activities. Determine which practices or activities the communication is promoting or performing. Consider the social groups, institutions, and cultural norms that support and normalize these activities. Ask questions like: "What social activities are being built or enacted through this communication?" and "Who are the intended participants in these activities?"
Identities Building Lens: Investigate how discursive sentences are used to shape and uphold social identities. Identify the recognizable identities the speaker aims to enact or make others acknowledge. Examine how the speaker addresses the identities of others in relation to their own and the invitations for others to adopt specific identities. Key questions include: "What social identities is the speaker trying to establish or recognize?" and "How is the speaker positioning others in terms of identity?"
Situated Meaning Lens: This lens examines how the meaning of discursive sentences is shaped by the social context in which they are used. It focuses on the specific meanings that listeners must attribute to words and phrases based on the contextual interpretation. Questions to address include: "How does the social context shape the meaning of words and phrases?" and "What specific meanings are attributed to language in this context?"
Figured World Lens: This lens analyzes how discursive sentences are used to create and sustain figurative worlds, such as those found in stories, poems, or plays. It identifies the assumed and implied typical stories or figured worlds that the communication conveys and invites listeners to adopt. Explore the participants, activities, interactions, language forms, people, objects, environments, institutions, and values within these figurative worlds. Ask questions like: "What kind of figurative world is being constructed here?" and "What elements define the world within this communication?"
Big D Discourse Lens: Examine how discursive sentences are used to construct and maintain broader social discourses, such as the discourse of science or politics. Analyze how language, as well as actions, interactions, beliefs, values, and various objects and technologies in specific environments, enact socially recognizable identities and engage in socially recognized activities. Identify the Discourse (with a capital 'D') that this language belongs to and understand the kind of identity the speaker or writer seeks to enact. Questions to consider include: "What Discourse is this language part of?" and "What type of identity is the speaker trying to establish or acknowledge?"
Big C Conversation Lens: Investigate how discursive sentences contribute to the creation and preservation of social conversations. Determine the assumed knowledge or information that hearers or readers are expected to possess. Analyze the communication's connection to broader historical and social issues, debates, and discussions among Discourses. Questions to address include: "What issues and debates does the communication assume its audience knows?" and "Is the communication participating in a larger historical or social conversation?"
You can use these lenses to analyze discursive sentences in various ways. The linguistics and rhetorical mechanism lens helps dissect how a politician persuades voters in a campaign speech. The subject lens helps look at how news articles cover specific events. The figured world lens unveils how poets create moods in their poems.
Identifying data through these different lenses helps you gain insights into the author's intentions and how the text shapes meaning. All this information can be useful for understanding the author's point of view, analyzing the effectiveness of a persuasive text, identifying bias in news reporting, and more.
INTERPRETATION
Step 7: Interpret the Data
The final step in discourse analysis is to interpret your findings. This involves connecting your findings to explain the essence and functionality of the discourse. You have spent the previous steps considering the discourse's background, authorship, and societal implications. Now, you tie it all together into a cohesive, well-organized write-up.
Step 8: Present Your Findings
Once you have interpreted your findings, you need to convey your results in an organized way. This may involve writing a research paper, giving a presentation, or creating a multimedia product. Be sure to emphasize the relevance of your findings and present a compelling case supported by evidence from your analysis.
Framing the Analytical Process
Let’s connect the dots to wrap our heads around what is actually happening during the research process.
Within discourse analysis, there are three main steps that occur:
Understanding context (Steps 1-4)
Examining the structure (Step 5)
Dissecting statements with various lenses (Step 6)
In a nutshell, your analysis will involve honing in on individual statements while considering the broader context. Think of this process as a pyramid.
Figure 3. Pyramid depicting the analytical heirarchy for discourse analysis ( Ho & Limpaecher, 2023)
At the base of the pyramid lies the context. Every interview, document, or text is situated within some context, be it cultural or otherwise.
Moving up a level, we encounter the structure of these interviews, documents, or texts. While they consist of discursive statements, these statements are part of a larger rhetorical structure that's important to understand.
At the apex of the pyramid are the statements themselves. Statements form the core of texts, and discourse analysis offers various lenses that delve deeply into these statements.
Advantages of Discourse Analysis
Deeper Understanding: Discourse analysis helps you get beneath the surface of texts and conversations. It reveals the underlying meanings and structures that may not be immediately apparent, providing a richer grasp of the subject matter.
Contextual Insight: By analyzing language within its context, you gain insights into the social, cultural, and historical factors influencing communication. This makes it particularly useful for understanding complex or sensitive issues.
Exploring Power Dynamics: Discourse analysis is a powerful tool for uncovering power imbalances and hierarchies in communication. It can highlight whose voices are heard and whose are marginalized, shedding light on social injustices.
Research Versatility: It's adaptable and can be applied to a wide range of materials. From literature and politics to everyday conversations and social media, this versatility allows you to explore various aspects of communication.
Disadvantages of Discourse Analysis
Complexity: Discourse analysis can be intricate, demanding a deep understanding of linguistic and social theories. This complexity might deter some researchers from using it.
Subjectivity: Interpretation plays a significant role, and different analysts may arrive at varied conclusions when examining the same text. Subjectivity is inherent in qualitative analysis, so you should take steps to validate your results, such as through peer debriefing, reflexivity, or by using a mixed-method study.
Time-Intensive: Comprehensive discourse analysis can be time-consuming, especially for newcomers. It involves meticulous interpretation of texts and can be particularly demanding for longer or more extensive materials.
Thematic Analysis vs. Qualitative Content Analysis vs. Discourse Analysis
Discourse analysis is an interpretive approach for examining texts, differing from more structured methods like qualitative content analysis and thematic analysis. It involves making interpretations based on the material itself and your own contextual knowledge.
At a high level, discourse analysis takes a particularly close look at a particular conversation. The corpus tends to be smaller because you generally dedicate a larger amount of time to analyzing smaller amounts of data. Content analysis and thematic analysis tend to take a broader look at themes across a large data set.
Here’s a more detailed explanation of each qualitative method:
Discourse Analysis
Discourse analysis is a broad approach that examines how language is used in social contexts to create meaning. It is interested in how language is used to construct and maintain social reality, power relations, and identity. Discourse analysts often use a critical lens to examine language, paying attention to how it can be used to reproduce or resist social inequalities and power dynamics.
Thematic Analysis
Thematic analysis is a qualitative approach that identifies and analyzes themes across a dataset. Themes are patterns of meaning that occur in multiple parts of the data. Thematic analysts may use a variety of methods to identify themes, such as coding and line-by-line analysis.
Qualitative Content Analysis
Content analysis is a systematic approach to analyzing the content of data. It is often used to quantify the frequency of certain words or phrases in the data, as you would in summative content analysis. Content analysts may also use coding to categorize the data into different categories.
Here is an example of how to differentiate these qualitative methods:
Discourse analysis of a news article about a crime might examine how the language used in the article constructs the victim and the perpetrator. It might also examine how the article uses language to frame the crime and promote a particular viewpoint.
Thematic analysis would look at more than one news article. A thematic analyst could identify themes in news articles across five different news outlets, examining how these themes are represented differently by each news outlet.
Content analysis of the same news article might count the number of times that certain keywords are used, such as "victim," "perpetrator," "crime," and "punishment.", comparing the frequency of these words to other news articles about similar crimes.
In general, discourse analysis is more interested in the social and communicative aspects of language, such as how it is used to convey power dynamics. Thematic analysis and content analysis are more interested in the meaning and content of language, including identifying overarching themes or patterns in the text.
Examples & Resources For Discourse Analysis
It might be beneficial to look at practical instances of discourse analysis, as they have been instrumental in creating the article you're currently reading. Here are some useful resources to further your understanding of discourse analysis in qualitative research.
1. An Introduction to Discourse Analysis: Theory and Method (Gee 2011)
Gee is generally considered a leading voice in modern-day discourse analysis. His book serves as an excellent introduction to discourse analysis. The book offers a comprehensive overview of various methodologies and theories, presented in an easily understandable manner. You also find valuable guidance on transcribing data for discourse analysis and effectively conducting this type of analysis.
Samples of discourse analysis are included in later chapters. The glossary is a very handy reference for new discourse analysts. We’ve included an excerpt from the book, which highlights the significance of considering language use in discourse analysis.
Gee offers one example where a researcher initiates an interaction with a student. The student is asked to explore the concept of light by using a lightbox to observe how a focused light beam interacts with various plastic shapes, including a prism that creates a colorful rainbow effect. Notational symbols are used to highlight speech features, which we explain below.
Gee also touches upon “stanzas,” which he describes as “tone units that deal with a single topic or perspective, and which “appear to have been planned together.” Tone units are a set of words said with one uniform intonation contour, meaning they are said as if they “go together.”
For instance, if a friend says, "I can't believe we're going to the beach!" In this sentence, "I can't believe" and "we're going to the beach" are two-tone units. Each is said with the same level of enthusiasm, making them feel like they "go together" in the conversation.
Gee shows that stanzas are created through interaction. He provides a simple example of how discourse analysts can flesh out meaning from a language-in-use approach by applying the Stanza Lens:
Double slash (“//”): Tone unit is said with a rising or falling pitch of voice that sounds “final,” as if a piece of information is coming to a finish.
Underlined words: Carry the primary stress within their tone unit.
Two periods (".."): Signify a noticeable pause.
"Low pitch": Refers to the preceding unit being spoken at an overall low pitch.
Figure 4. Example of how to transcribe a stanza in discourse analysis (Gee, 2011, pp. 118)
While this example isn't from Gee's book, Medina (2005) used discourse analysis to interpret Latina/o children's writing in role-play and explore issues related to identity and power in drama. We offer this illustration to show how stanzas can be structured and defined, along with the discourses she discovered within each stanza.
Figure 5. Extract defining and structuring stanzas in discourse analysis (Medina, 2005, pp. 109)
2. Discursive Psychology and Discourse Analysis (Potter 2012)
In this book, you'll find comprehensive examples that showcase the practical application of discourse analysis. It also illustrates the common practice of transcribing data before embarking on the analysis. The book serves as a valuable resource to see how discourse analysis actually works in practice. In this extract, pay close attention to the line numbers on the left. These lines are typically referred to in the analysis and interpretation of the data.
Figure 6. Extract showing how to use markers in transcribing data (Medina, 2005, pp. 109)
In this transcript example, "Dad" signals the call's end in the Announcement. He then provides two dentist-related Accounts as to why. This indicates the need to close the call while also showing care for Sue. Accounts help maintain relationships by highlighting the speaker's consideration for the other person. It's a helpful example, but sometimes call closings are more complex as people focus on the other's situation.
3. Conversation Analysis and Institutional Talk: Analyzing Data (Heritage 2004)
This is an influential book on how to conduct conversation analysis. It contains good examples of how to conduct the analysis and how to interpret the data as well (see screenshots below). It deals with various levels of analysis like turn-taking, the overall organization of the interaction, sequence organization, and more.
This is a typical high-level text, which would commonly be found in graduate courses where students are learning about discourse analysis. It is both theoretical and practical and a useful guide for how to conduct a type of discourse analysis.
The following extract shows a typical way of transcribing data for discourse analysis. As in Potter’s example, mind the line numbers on the left, as well as the specific notational devices and markers discussed by Gee.
Figure 7. Line numbers in transcriptions for conversation analysis (Heritage, 2004, pp. 227)
The following extract displays a typical approach to presenting your analysis. The transcription includes the referenced lines, structured into distinct sections. This emphasizes their significance and enables readers to navigate to those parts quickly.
Figure 8. Presenting interpretations by referencing line numbers (Heritage, 2004, pp. 228)
Try Delve For Discourse Analysis
If you want to streamline your research and not rely on pen and paper, here are some tips for using Delve to code your data for discourse analysis:
Start by creating a list of coding categories. These categories should be based on your research questions and the theoretical framework you are using. As you code your data, you may need to add or refine new categories.
Import your data into Delve. The software supports various data formats, including text files, transcripts, and social media posts.
Assign codes to specific passages of text. You can do this by clicking on the passage and selecting the appropriate code from the coding menu. You can also assign multiple codes to a single passage.
Use Delve’s search and filtering features to analyze your data. You can search for all passages that have been assigned a particular code or you can filter your data to only show passages that have been assigned multiple codes.
Use Delve's other features to support your discourse analysis. For example, you can take notes on your data, create transcripts, and generate visualizations.
Delve is a powerful tool that can help you to code your data more efficiently and effectively for discourse analysis. By following the tips above, you can use Delve to gain valuable insights into the use of language in your data. Start your 14 day free trial today.
References
Gee, J.P. (2011). An Introduction to Discourse Analysis: Theory and Method (3rd ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203847886
Stubbs, M. (2001). Words and Phrases: Corpus Studies of Lexical Semantics. New York: Blackwell.
Paltridge, B. (2012). Discourse Analysis: An Introduction (2nd ed.). London: Bloomsbury.
Chimombo, M., & Roseberry, R.L. (1998). The Power of Discourse: An Introduction To Discourse Analysis (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203053720
Gee, J.P. (2010). How to do Discourse Analysis: A Toolkit: A Toolkit (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203850992
Lee, E., & Bhuyan, R. (2013). Negotiating within whiteness in cross-cultural clinical encounters. Social Service Review, 87(1), 98–130. https://doi.org/10.1086/669919
Supran, G., & Oreskes, N. (2021). Rhetoric and frame analysis of ExxonMobil's climate change communications. One Earth, 4(5), 696-719.
Sunderland, J. (2018). Research questions in linguistics. In L. Litosseliti (Ed.), Research Methods in Linguistics (pp. 9 - 28). Continuum.
Potter, J. (2012). Discursive psychology and discourse analysis. In J. P. Gee and M. Handford (Eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Discourse Analysis. Routledge.
Heritage, J. (2004). Conversation analysis and institutional talk: Analyzing data. In D. Silverman (Ed.), Qualitative research: Theory, method and practice (pp. 222-245). SAGE Publications.
Medina, Carmen. (2005). Discourse and Ideology in Writing in Role: Critical Discourse Analysis as a Tool for Interpretation. Youth Theatre Journal. 19. 102-116.
Van Dijk, T. A. (Ed.). (2011). Discourse studies: A multidisciplinary introduction (2nd ed.). SAGE Publications.
Mogashoa, Tebogo (2014). Understanding Critical Discourse Analysis in Qualitative Research. International Journal of Humanities, Social Sciences, and Education.
Shaw, Sara; Bailey, Julia (2009). Discourse analysis: what is it and why is it relevant to family practice. Oxford Journals.
Image References
Lee, E., & Bhuyan, R. (2013). Negotiating within whiteness in cross-cultural clinical encounters. Social Service Review, 87(1), 98–130. https://doi.org/10.1086/669919
Supran, G., & Oreskes, N. (2021). Rhetoric and frame analysis of ExxonMobil's climate change communications. One Earth, 4(5), 696-719.
Sunderland, J. (2018). Research questions in linguistics. In L. Litosseliti (Ed.), Research Methods in Linguistics (pp. 9 - 28). Continuum.
Delve. Ho, L., & Limpaecher, A. (2023, November 1). What is Discourse Analysis? An Introduction & Guide Essential Guide to Coding Qualitative Data. https://delvetool.com/blog/discourse-analysis
Gee, J.P. (2011). An Introduction to Discourse Analysis: Theory and Method (3rd ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203847886.
Potter, J. (2012). Discursive psychology and discourse analysis. In J. P. Gee and M. Handford (Eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Discourse Analysis. Routledge.
Heritage, J. (2004). Conversation analysis and institutional talk: Analyzing data. In D. Silverman (Ed.), Qualitative research: Theory, method and practice (pp. 222-245). SAGE Publications.
Heritage, J. (2004). Conversation analysis and institutional talk: Analyzing data. In D. Silverman (Ed.), Qualitative research: Theory, method and practice (pp. 222-245). SAGE Publications.
Cite this blog post:
Delve. Ho, L., & Limpaecher, A. (2023, November 1). What is Discourse Analysis? An Introduction & Guide Essential Guide to Coding Qualitative Data. https://delvetool.com/blog/discourse-analysis