But How Do You Actually DO Critical Discourse Analysis?

 

Critical discourse analysis is most frequently described as an approach to reading qualitative data, rather than a method. This is an important distinction, given the primacy of theory in CDA and mediates against the 'methodolotry' common to other types of research.

There is a good description of discourse analysis from the Uni of Texas site HERE

some excerpts..
Discourse Analysis does not provide a tangible answer to problems based on scientific research, but it enables access to the ontological and epistemological assumptions behind a project, a statement, a method of research 
Discourse Analysis will enable to reveal the hidden motivations behind a text or behind the choice of a particular method of research to interpret that text. 
Expressed in today's more trendy vocabulary, Critical or Discourse Analysis is nothing more than a deconstructive reading and interpretation of a problem or text 
Discourse Analysis will, thus, not provide absolute answers to a specific problem, but enable us to understand the conditions behind a specific "problem" 
Discourse Analysis is meant to provide a higher awareness of the hidden motivations in others and ourselves and, therefore, enable us to solve concrete problems - not by providing unequivocal answers, but by making us ask ontological and epistemological questions.

The lack of commitment to method can, however, be very frustrating for the new researcher, struggling to write up their method and operationalise or at least gain some clarity regarding their their analysis.

I have found a paper below where the authors i believe describe their 'method' fairly well and have cut and paste the relevant sections...more as a means by which I can sort this out for myself than anything.

1. Parents’Constructions of the Problem’ during Assessment and Diagnosis of their Child for an Autistic Spectrum Disorder EVRINOMY AVDI CHRISTINE GRIFFIN SUSAN BROUGH
Solihull Health Authority, UK
Journal of Health Psychology Vol 5(2) 241–254; 012239

Eleven semi-structured interviews were carried out by one of the researchers (EA) with three sets
of parents who were undergoing assessment of their sons for ‘communication difficulties’ at a
child development centre

A broad interview schedule with thematic headings was used as a general guide for the interviews.
Open-ended questions and circular questioning techniques were employed; the questions
were addressed to both parents and were aimed at eliciting detailed elaboration of their
views and encouraging the expression of multiple positions. The interviews took place
in the participants’ home and lasted between 90 minutes and 3 hours.

The analysis was carried out over a period of 8 months and broadly followed the stages outlined
by Billig (1997).

1. Following interviewing and transcription, the initial stage of the analysis consisted
of familiarizing ourselves with the transcripts and beginning to develop ‘hunches’ about
the accounts regarding constructions of the‘problem’.
2. The next stage involved selection of all extracts that referred to parents’ understandings of their child’s problem and, through repeated readings, aiming to discern patterns both within and across accounts and to hypothesize about their function(s).
3. Then followed a lengthy and recursive process of coding of the transcript material to key themes, which were produced through repeated readings and were informed by the research questions and relevant literature. The analysis aimed to identify key discourses in the parents’ talk, and to investigate how these related to one another and how they were used in constructions of the ‘problem’.

In this article we focus on the most dominant themes in the participants’ accounts. The parents
in this study were found to employ three main discourses in their talk about their child’s ‘problem’,
which we refer to as the discourse of normal development, the medical discourse and
the disability discourse. The first incorporate constructions about ‘normal’ development and
the parents’ role in promoting this. The medical discourse locates the child in relation to a
specific disease or condition, assumed to have a knowable cause, treatment and prognosis. The
disability discourse has associations of developmental delay and deficiency, constructs the child
as having a more permanent status as ‘other’ and raises issues concerned with the management of
differentness and stigma.

It is interesting to compare Discourse Analysis with Narrative Inquiry.....both result in big picture themes..the first reveals socially constructed discourses/meta-narratives..the second reveals typologies of personal journeys through life...of course there can be interplay between the two...

Illness Narrative Typologies

Many of my students are struggling at the moment to develop higher order coding in narrative inquiry research, particularly looking to understand typologies of narratives..I highly recommend France et al. (2013), just out in Qualitative Health Research http://qhr.sagepub.com/content/23/12/1649.abstract which provides a great lead to Frank's typologies of illness narratives..

Fallot (2001), points out, however, that Frank's typologies were constructed for chronic illness, rather than mental illness and that most recovery stories are in fact focused on the Quest types, rather than the Chaos or Restitution types.

These 2 papers provide good leads..

We're Baa..ack!

 First meeting 2014 is January 29 1-3 pm Psychology Clinic Conference Room Mackie Building..all welcome!!!

QRIP on HOLD

Just a quick post to let you know QRIP is on the hold for the time being while I focus on trying to get some research funding..you can contact me directly for one-to-one consultation

Writing Up...

Just a quick post to share this article by Ron Chenail about writing up...it covers so many of the things we have been talking about recently but really puts the turbo on the creativity and number of options availalbe to us in writing up

Here The Qualitative Report, Volume 2, Number 3, December, 1995(http://www.nova.edu/ssss/QR/QR2-3/presenting.html)

Some quotes to reinforce the points:
“I write in order to learn something that I didn’t know before I wrote it…not to write until I knew what I wanted to say, until my points were organized and outlined… this static writing model coheres with mechanistic scientism and quantitative research… It ignores the role of writing as a dynamic, creative process….(Richardson L. 1990)
“Writing-up qualitative research inevitably results in the emergence of new ideas and ways of viewing the data and hence plays a crucial role in the analysis process.”(Pitchforth et al. 2005)

Shut Up and Write continues

We had a very productive first ShutUp and Write meeting this Friday with 13 people joining for 7 hours of writing....many people writing up results, a few writing research proposals, discussions and other things...we had lots of interesting chats during the breaks, comparing analysis methods, working on adding some literature to results sections but generally I think the real benefit was simply having an opportunity to write without the distractions of being at home, without access to the internet but in a collegial and supportive setting

I found it pretty amazing how much I got done, writing about half a paper, which is really saying something..plus...Toblerone, Brownies, quiche, slice, fruit and many more goodies...

We planned to more meetings;

1. October19 9am-4pm in the Conference Room in Psychology Clinic, Mackie Building

2. Novermber 30th 9am-4pm OTC 405 as before

Bring your own lap top for the October meeting, computers provided for November.....please email me to express an interest...p.rhodes@sydney.edu.au

Behind the Times

The more I read the more concerned I become about how we are lagging behind in clinical psychology in Australia when it comes to qualitative research in psychology..been reading this INTRODUCTION TO QUALITATIVE METHODS IN PSYCHOLOGY Dennis Howitt Loughborough University where he provides a history of qual in psychology, marking the 1980's as when qual became more accepted..

That is certainly not the case with clinical psychology here where we lag way behind...even in 1940 it was understood that science can include qualitative..

If we rejoice, for example, that present-day psychology is . . . increasingly
empirical, mechanistic, quantitative, nomothetic, analytic, and operational,
we should also beware of demanding slavish subservience to these presuppositions. Why not allow psychology as a science – for science is a broad and beneficent term – to be also rational, teleological, qualitative, idiographic, synoptic, and even  non-operational? I mention these antitheses of virtue with deliberation, for the simple reason that great insights of psychology 
in the past – for example, those of Aristotle, Locke, Fechner, James, Freud– have stemmed from one or more of these unfashionable presuppositions. (Allport, 1940, p. 25)

Thank god for Health Psychology and Critical Psychology who still wave the flag...