Discourse

Analysis

• The last assignment

• Discourse analysis

• Semiotic Square

• Thematic analysis

Analysis Assignment

• We can start when all the data is in and when we have done the training – from the 28th of May

• Due date June 30th

• Analysis presentations June 27th, two streams

Discourse analysis• The analysis of language 'beyond the sentence' • Not a study of grammar - how words and their

component parts combine to form sentences.• About meanings created by:

– words or signs (semantics) – “used car salesman” – the order of words/signs in sentences or sequences

(syntactics) PLEASE USE THE TOILET, NOT THE POOL

POOL FOR MEMBERS ONLY – the relationship between words/signs used and their

users or context (pragmatics)Dr. “The test is negative” Patient: “Oh, I’ve got

cancer”

Discourse analysis methodsSemantic• Use of semiotic analysis• DeconstructionPragmatic• Analysis of the conventions of discourse –

turn taking, listenership, how rules of conversation are signaled or marked

• Functional analysis of speech acts • Frame/context analysis

Semiotics

The study of signs• Semantics: Relation between signs and the

things to which they refer

• Syntactics: Relations among signs in formal structures

• Pragmatics: Relation between signs and their effects on those (people) who use them

• a 'signifier' - the form which the sign takes; and

• the 'signified' - the concept(s) it represents

Syntagmatic analysis• studying the meaning that emerges from text

structure and the relationships between parts of the text

• the most basic narrative syntagm: the linear temporal model composed of three phases - equilibrium-disruption-equilibrium or a beginning, a muddle and an end

• a “schema” typifying the way events are related in everyday life – what does it mean when a schema is i.e. the narrative is changed to an end, a muddle and a beginning?

M moves and gives a task to Bond. The villain moves and appears to Bond. Bond moves and gives a first check to the villain

or the villain gives first check to Bond. Woman moves and shows herself to Bond. Bond consumes woman: possesses her or begins

her seduction. The villain captures Bond. The villain tortures Bond. Bond conquers the villain. Bond convalescing enjoys woman, whom he

then loses.

Village crime story visual syntax The autonomous shot (e.g. establishing shot, insert)

– long shot of a village [soft and gorgeous] The parallel syntagm (montage of motifs) - shots of

various parts of the village [charming, but with one or two discordant notes]

The bracketing syntagm (montage of brief shots) – two people walking from either of the village [expectation of meeting]

The descriptive syntagm (sequence describing one moment) - they meet [background to the plot]

Village crime story visual syntax The alternating syntagm (two sequences alternating) -

he talks, she talks [heated discussion] The scene (shots implying temporal continuity) -

interview series with other key characters [more background]

The episodic sequence (organized discontinuity of shots) - images created from a key character’s piecemeal recollection [excitement of an important discovery]

The ordinary sequence (temporal with some compression) - rapid fire impressionistic sequence - [hot on the trail of the villian]

Paradygmatic analysis

• Seeks to identify the various paradigms (or pre-existing sets of signifiers, concepts, thought patterns or themes) which underlie the obvious content of texts

• Goes below the 'surface structure' of a text• Focus on binary oppositions in the meaning

of words, presence/absence of events (contrasts)

• Commutation test: the effect of substitution of a binary opposite on the meaning of the text

I remember having a boyfriend. He was one of those kind of shapely boys, but muscley you know, and I remember we would be getting ready to go to our school social and he would be moaning about being - he thought he was fat and it was just so annoying. But I suppose that in some ways he was. You know all the rest of us were skinny and stuff and he was sort of muscley. So that gave me the idea how he felt looking at us and how I feel sometimes looking at other boys

Looking beyond the surface

• What the gender of the speaker?

• How old is s/he?

• How old is this narrative – this generation, 20 years ago, 40 years ago, ......?

• What images or ideas do we get if we believe this as coming from a sincere speaker?

• Anything that worries you?

I remember having a girlfriend. She was one of those kind of shapely girls, but muscley you know, and I remember we would be getting ready to go to our school social and she would be moaning about being - she thought she was fat and it was just so annoying. But I suppose that in some ways she was. You know all the rest of us were skinny and stuff and she was sort of muscley. So that gave me the idea how she felt looking at us and how I feel sometimes looking at other girls.

Commutation tests

• By substituting age, gender, culture, socio-economic status, etc within a text we can get an understanding of:– What ideas, ways of being are fundamental to a

particular group?– The difference in power held by contrasting

groups

Oppositions Binary oppositions (logical) e.g. male/not-male, where

'not-male' is inevitably 'female‘ [on/not on, dead/not dead]

Gradable oppositions - comparative grading on the same implicit dimension, e.g. good/bad where 'not good' is not necessarily 'bad' and vice versa – antonyms. [ugly/beautiful, rich/poor]

Converse oppositions whose elements are mutually exclusive, but not gradable, and which together only form part of the universe of discourse - sun/moon, [land/sea, city/country]

Markedness• Added morphemes (un-, in-, dis-, etc). Lexical marking -

adding a distinctive feature to a word. The word 'happy' is unmarked, whilst the word 'unhappy' is marked. [discreet/indiscreet, trust/distrust]

• male/female, man/woman, he/she are unmarked/marked forms

• Contextual neutralization. The unmarked term is often also seen as the generic term; the marked term is not. For humanity we used to use the term Man (not sex-specific), he has long been used generically. We talk about our state of happiness which includes our unhappiness

• The unmarked form is typically dominant (more desirable or powerful).

Starting high school I got a bit depressed. Then I put on a lot of weight, which was quite hard, because I felt unlovable anyway because of my parents and what was happening with friends. And my body just reinforced it, because, when I lacked friends and felt unloved, I didn't have friends. I think I just felt incredibly ugly. I remember just not wanting to leave my room at all.

• Find unmarked/marked binaries

• Find positive and negative terms (courageous, cruel) and try to add a morpheme – un-, in-, dis-, de-, non-

• Find corresponding negative and positive terms (cowardly, kind) and try add a morpheme - un-, in-, dis-, de-, non-

• Are marked terms generally negative?

• Exceptions: marked/unmarked

• Is it hard to add a morpheme to a negative unmarked word?

• Exceptions: fallible/infallible

unmarked markedPositive meaning

courageous kind

uncourageous unkind

Negative meaning

cruel cowardly fallible marked

infallible unmarked

Power and ‘logical’ binaries• Western thinking, Derrida says, has been

founded upon the 'logic' of binary oppositions, such as mind/body, rational/emotional, man/woman, nature/culture, 1st world/3rd world, majority/minority

• One term is always given a more privileged position than its opposite, and becomes an ideological position

• Understanding logical binaries and their power relations is the basis of deconstruction – a thematic analysis technique

Semiotic square version 1

Theme of Greed

Theme of Greed

Finding the antonym

Finding the Not S forms

Semi-otic

Square V2

Both.. And..

Semiotic Square V2

Reasonable

Semiotic square – greed/generousity

• Greed vs moderation vs generous/caring/kind • Not greedy vs ungenerous/uncaring/unkind• Unselfish/kind thoughtful/considerate vs

Selfish/self-focused/absorbed• Self focused/indulgence/wasteful vs conserving• Mean vs careful vs generous• Cooperative/sharing/helpful vs obstructive• Uncooperative/unhelpful/independent vs not

obstructive/dependent/interdependent• Rich vs poor Do a semiotic square, get themes from RD task

• Think of a theme that you noticed in your interview

• Think of single words that define that theme

• Draw a semiotic square and put a word that describes your theme in the S1 position• Fill in the rest of the positions including the both and positions

Reasonable

Denotation and connotation

• 'Denotation' tends to be described as the definitional, 'literal', 'obvious' or 'commonsense' meaning of a sign;

• ‘Connotation' refers to its socio-cultural and personal associations (ideological, emotional etc.).

Levels of meaning

Levels of meaning

Myth

Colin McCahon’s Urewera mural

Metaphor and Metonymy• Metaphor expresses the unfamiliar in terms of the

familiar

The runaway truck bit into the side of the houseMetonymy involves:

a part standing for the whole ('the smoke' is London; workers are sometimes called 'hands'; 'I've got a new set of wheels')

a whole standing for a part (e.g. 'the market' for customers, 'the law' is a policeman).

Thematic analysis

Thematic analysis• A method for identifying, analysing and

reporting patterns (themes) within data1.• Not recipe based – there are many ways of

doing it – Grounded Theory more recipe based• Applicable to Grounded theory, discourse

analysis, narrative analysis• Not based on a strict theoretical position

within qualitative analysis • Applicable to a wide variety of data sets

including observation across a range of media • Often is a poorly defined, post-hoc processRead transcript

Themes

What counts as a theme?• Contained within a word, a phrase, a paragraph or a page – a

concrete description, an abstract idea, a metaphor or a myth

• High prevalence or incidence

• Presence of ideas in one group or context and absence in another or a continuum of meaning from high significance to low significance, from high positive value to high negative value

• An idea capturing something important in relation to the overall research question – coverage of ideas vs uniqueness.

• An idea that fits pre-existing theory (deductive) or an idea that emerges from the data (inductive)

• A context for ideas, a cause and effect relationship between events Do 1-4

What counts as a theme?• recurrence: at least two parts of the data reflect the same

thread of meaning, even though different words are used

• repetition: key words, phrases, or sentences are repeated in at least two parts of the discourse

• forcefulness: significant changes in volume (up or down) or inflection. The use of phrases (“what really would help”, sometimes dramatic (“fantastic”, “devastating”), or pregnant pauses indicating the importance of a segment of discourse.

• patterns of co-occurrence: causal (A causes/results from B), associational (A and B are connected in time, A is a context in which B occurs); contrasting (A is opposite to B, A is absent when B is present), part/whole (A is a property or an aspect of B)

Creating the themes• Read all the transcripts• Identify most interesting, most irritating, most

confusing, most disappointing, most unexpected, most predictable, most moving pieces of transcript

• Find other points of energy in the discourse by looking for the myths, metaphors and metanyms, polarities and the paradoxes (the places of contradiction). Look for absence as well presence of key ideas

• Name/describe these things as themes  

Creating the themes

• Try to reduce your list of themes to a maximum of 3 themes per group member.

• Collapse themes that have the same or similar meanings

• Locate some themes as sub-themes of larger themes.

• Create a list of words that seem to relate to each theme.

Creating the themes

• Come together and discuss all the themes

• Additionally identify those themes that are answers to specific questions or specific prompts.

• Identify themes that relate to specific theories that have emerged from you reading of the literature.

• Create a semiotic square - a list of words/phrases that seem to define to each theme. This will help you place your themes on a continuum, find their opposite, find a paradox within them. Use Google search and/or the Word thesaurus to find synonyms and antonyms

Create a demograph of your participants

• Create a table of participant’s demographic features from the demographic information you have collected – age, gender, occupation, spiritual context, etc.

• Identify other demographic features that seem important in relation to the key themes that are emerging. This could include features of the carbon footprint measure

• Identify demographic features that predict the likelihood that a theme will be present in a given context. Key theories in the literature will point to this

Building the texts

• Use the Find function of your word processor to locate all instances of the use of keys word.

• Copy each example of a piece of theme verbatim onto a new document and give a new page for each theme and sub theme

• Include page reference and the name of the participant who created it

• Seek new suitable search words as you develop your themes

Building the texts• Continue to look for the poles of your

continuum, the opposites or paradox. absence

• Continue to look for metaphor, metonym, myth, emotional resonance

• Check each participant in relation to the absence or presence of each theme

• Be aware of patterns of theme use by different demographs within your participant group

A six step process1. Familiarizing yourself with your data: Transcribing data (if

necessary), reading and re-reading the data, noting down initial ideas.

– The transcripts are checked for 'accuracy'.2. Generating initial codes: Coding interesting features of the

data in a systematic fashion across the entire data set, collating data relevant to each code.

– Each data item has equal attention in coding. 3. Searching for themes: Collating codes into potential themes,

gathering all data relevant to each potential theme.– Themes are not generated from a few vivid examples.– All relevant extracts for each theme are collated

A six step process4. Reviewing themes: Checking if the themes work in relation

to the coded extracts (Level 1) and the entire data set (Level 2), generating a thematic ‘map’ of the analysis. – Themes are checked against each other and back to the

original data set. – Themes are internally coherent, consistent, and

distinctive. 5. Defining and naming themes: Ongoing analysis to refine

the specifics of each theme, and the overall story the analysis tells, generating clear definitions and names for each theme. – Data have been analyzed – interpreted, made sense of –

rather than just paraphrased or described. – Analysis and data match each other – the extracts

illustrate the analytic claims.

A six step process6. Producing the report: Selection of vivid, compelling

extracts, final analysis of selected extracts, relating back of the analysis to the research question and literature, producing a scholarly report of the analysis.

– The analysis tells a convincing & well-organized story.– There is a good balance between analytic narrative

and illustrative extracts.– Enough time is given to complete all of the analysis – The assumptions about, and specific approach to,

thematic analysis are clearly explained.– There is a good fit between what is described as the

method and the reported analysis.– The language/concepts are consistent with the

epistemological position of the analysis.– The researcher is positioned as active in the research

process: themes do not just 'emerge'.

Deconstruction

• Poststructuralist technique.

• Interest in unstated oppositional relations

• Undermine what he called the 'metaphysics of presence' - 'transcendent signified'. Initial term is privileged, leaving 'term B' negatively 'marked'.

• Most radical deconstruction challenges binary frameworks in general. Deconstructionists acknowledge there is no definitive reading - all texts contain contradictions and undermine themselves.

Type 1

• Comprehension – defining the key theories • Reading: pay attention to how organizations,

identities, roles, relationships, stories, rituals, and labor processes are constructed. – Taken-for-granted assumptions. – Silences, Exclusions, and Deletions.

• Acting: what are the roles of power • (Re)Writing: Reaching Out and (Re)Authoring.

What are the practical alternatives, options, innovative ways of moving on?

Type 2: deconstructing dualities

• Find the Dualities look for assumptions, silences, exclusions, deletions, asides, and hierarchies.

• Articulate the Hierarchy. Show how the text constructs a hierarchy by privileging one term over the other. One term may be vocal while the other is absent, silent or a supplement to the primary term.

• Reverse the Dualities. Reversing means to look at the ways in which the other term is sometimes and in some ways the more dominant term.

• Resituate the Duality. The task is to remove the domination of the hierarchy of the duality in the text. Writing a new plot or restorying the dominant hierarchies.

Type 3: deconstructing storiesDefine the Dualities - Who or what is at opposite ends

in the story? Reinterpret - What is the alternative interpretation to

the story? Rebel voices - Deny the authority of the one voice.

Who's not being represented or is under represented? Other side of the story - What is the silent or under-

represented story.Deny the plot - What is the plot? Turn it around. Find the exception - What is the exception that breaks

the rule? What is between the lines - What is not said? What is

the writing on the wall?

Intertextuality• A literary work, is not simply the product of a

single author, but of its relationship to other texts and to the structures of language itself.

• Any text is a new tissue of past citations. Bits of code, formulae, rhythmic models, fragments of social languages

• It cannot be reduced to sources and references - a general field of unconscious or automatic quotations, given without quotation marks