Discourse research

Taylor, Stephanie J. A. (2019). Discourse research. In: Atkinson, Paul; Delamont, Sara; Cernat, Alexandru; Sakshaug, Joseph W. and Williams, Richard A. eds. The Sage Encyclopedia of Research Methods. SAGE.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.4135/9781526421036793899

URL: http://methods.sagepub.com/foundations/discourse-r...

Abstract

Discourse research encompasses a range of theoretical and disciplinary traditions, including approaches based in Michel Foucault's theoretical writing, sociolinguistic approaches, critical discourse analysis (CDA), conversation analysis (CA), and discourse analysis in social psychology. The specific focus of this chapter is discourse research that analyses language data as evidence of social phenomena. The chapter divides the field of discourse research into three overlapping areas: discourse research as the study of social context, the study of social practices and the study of a social subject. The chapter outlines the premises of each area and the issues it raises, citing major sources and also examples that indicate the variety of recent research within the field, including the critical focus of many discourse research studies. A section on language data reviews some widely used analytic concepts, including 'discourse' and 'interpretative repertoire', and key debates around the social nature of language, including the connection between the discursive and the extra-discursive, and the status of the analyst in interpretive research. A later section describes the most common sources of language data. Finally, the chapter considers the continuing contributions of discourse research to social research more generally. The chapter suggests that the analytic approaches developed by discourse researchers continue to be widely used and have also contributed to the development of different approaches. It introduces three different areas which are often presented as developments of discourse research: narrative research, psychosocial research and visual research methods.

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