1. Social Text Analysis

2. Social text analyses examine the meanings and uses of a given text.

3. Creating a Social Text
First, the researcher needs to identify a work or works of interest.
Second, from that work the researcher needs to construct a text.
This process is called textualization.
The researcher must remain faithful to the work.
Documents can be social texts.
Enacted talk, transcribed, can be a social text.

4. Transcribing Enacted Talk
Qualitative researchers generally transcribe their own work.
Transcription is not a neutral activity
The researcher becomes familiar with her data through transcription
The level of transcription will depend on the research purpose.
There are several principles guiding the transcription process (Edwards, 1993).
Principles of Category Design
Principles of Readability
Principles of Tractability

5. Communication Criticism (Sillars & Gronbeck, 2001)
Communication criticism describes a body of social approaches to the study of public messages.
There are three processes involved in communication criticism:
Textualization
Analysis
Interpretation
Some critical approaches include a fourth process, judgment.
There are three families of communication criticism:
The Rhetorical Tradition
The Social Tradition
Cultural Tradition

6. Discourse Analysis: Two Traditions
A structural perspective approaches discourse above the sentence level.
For example, utterances, conversations, accounts would be studied as discourse.
A functional perspective approaches the “use” of language.
What are the functions and purposes of discourse?
How is discourse situated in a cultural system?

7. Conversation Analysis
A type of discourse analysis
The origins are in ethnomethodology.
The study of naturally occurring interaction
Issues to consider (Pomerantz & Fehr, 1997):
Select a sequence of talk for study
Identify the actions in the sequence
Identify how the actions are performed.
Identify how timing and taking of turns construct certain understandings of the action.
Consider how the actions construct certain identities, roles, and relationships for the speakers.

8. The Narrative Approach
Meaning is constructed through stories.
Stories are structured by a beginning, middle, and end.
Researchers examine the process of storytelling: how a story is accomplished.
Researchers examine the form of a narrative, such as the structure, characterization, and narrative voice.
Researchers examine the content of narratives, such as the themes and meanings.

9. Performative/Dramatistic Approaches
Performance studies conceives communication as performance.
The researcher is both a tool for understanding and performing.
Communication is an embodied performance – scholarship, then is embodied.
Researchers also examine the performances of others.

10. A Semiotic Approach
Semiotics is the study of the signification process.
Signification is the process by which signs are conveyed with meaning.