Social Research Methods Alan Bryman Social Research Methods Chapter 22: Language in Qualitative research Slides authored by Tom Owens

Language and social research Knowing how words are used and the meanings of specific terms in the local vernacular (or `argot') is crucial to an appreciation of how the social world being studied is viewed by its members The two approaches examined here treat language as their central focal point: conversation analysis (CA) and discourse analysis (DA) Page 522

What is conversation analysis? Conversation analysis (CA) is the fine-grained analysis of talk as it occurs in interaction in naturally occurring situations. The talk is usually recorded and transcribed so that the detailed analyses can be carried out. These analyses are concerned with uncovering the underlying structures of talk in interaction and as such with the achievement of order through interaction. Page 522 3

Assumptions of CA Speech is seen as action that ‘does’ something Focus is on the ‘here-and-now’ context of talk avoid making extraneous inferences Heritage (1984, 1987) talk is structured by tacit rules talk is forged contextually analysis is grounded in data The specific details of conversational interaction cannot be ignored Pages 523, 525 4

Some basic tools of CA: 1 Notational symbols Turn-taking We:ll - prolonged sound .hh - intake of breath (0.8) - silence for 0.8 seconds Turn-taking Adjacency pairs question and answer invitation and response Pages 525,526 5

Some basic tools of CA: 2 Preference organization Accounts one response preferred to the other (e.g. acceptance/refusal) dispreferred response has to be justified Accounts justifies action by reference to common values Repair mechanisms response to unexpected speech acts restores interaction to normal appearances Pages 526-527 6

What is discourse analysis? All forms of linguistic communication Discourse is constitutive of the social world frames the way we perceive reality creates objects of knowledge Anti-realist epistemology Constructionist ontology What are people trying to accomplish when they use particular discourses? Pages 528,529 7

Three basic discourse-analytic questions Page 529 8

Four themes in discourse analysis Discourse is a topic, not just a resource Language is constructive Discourse is a form of action Rhetorically organized establishing one version of the world in the face of competing versions Gill (2000) Thinking deeply 22.1 Page 530 9

Uncovering interpretative repertoires General resources used to construct discourse and enable the performance of certain acts (Potter & Wetherell, 1994) e.g. Gilbert and Mulkay’s (1984) found separate empiricist and contingent repertoires of language used by scientists, depending on whether they were presenting their work in scientific papers or discussing it more informally with the researchers. Pages 531-533 10

Producing facts Discourse analysts are interested in the ways that allegedly factual knowledge is conveyed Potter et al (1991) studied the making of a television documentary ‘Cancer: Your money or your life’ (Channel 4, April 1988) They used the following methods: Looking for rhetorical detail Use of variation as a lever Reading the detail Looking for statements of credibility Cross-referencing discourse studies Page 533-536 11

Critical discourse analysis (CDA) CDA emphasizes the role of language as a power resource that is related to ideology and socio-cultural change CDA tries to reveal the meaning of a phenomenon by asking: why something seems to mean something different now to what it meant 40 years ago; how one discourse influences another; how discourse is constructed through academic or journal articles; how discourse makes certain activities possible, desirable or inevitable; how some people use discourse to legitimate their positions and actions Page 536-538 12

Overview of Discourse Analysis More flexible than Conversation Analysis in looking beyond immediate context of talk Growing in popularity Anti-realist position leads to a criticism of being too abstract The term itself – ‘discourse analysis’ – may be too broad to be meaningful Overall, understanding how language is used may be crucial to understanding the social world Page 538, 539 13