Introducing Discourse Analysis for

Qualitative Research
Discourse analysis suggests it can be revealing to look at not just what people say, but how.
Learn more in our introduction to discourse analysis.

Daniel Turner

Sep 29, 2020 • 9 min read

Founder and director of Quirkos, Dr Daniel Turner has 20 years of expertise in qualitative
research in academia and wider social research

Qualitative research often focuses on what people say: be that in interviews, focus-groups,
diaries, social media or documents. Qualitative researchers often try to understand the world
by listening to how people talk, but it can be really revealing to look at not just what people
say, but how. Essentially this is the how discourse analysis (DA) can be used to examine
qualitative data.

What is discourse?
Discourse is the complete system by which people communicate, it’s the widest interpretation
of what we call ‘language’. It includes both written, verbal and non-verbal communication, as
well as the wider social concepts that underpin what language means, and how it changes. For
example, it can be revealing to look at how some people use a particular word, or terms from
a particular local dialect. This can show their upbringing and life history, or influences from
other people and workplace culture.

It can also be interesting to look at non-verbal communication: people’s facial expressions

and hand movements are an important part of the context of what people say. But language is
also a dynamic part of culture, and the meanings behind terms change over time. How we
understand terms like ‘fake news’ or ‘immigration’ or ‘freedom’ tells us a lot, not just about
the times we live in or the people using those terms, but groups that have power to change the
discourse on such issues.

We will look at all these as separate types of discourse analysis. But first it’s important to
understand why language is so important; it is much more than just a method of
communication.

Why is language important for discourse analysis?

“Language allows us to do things. It allows us to engage in actions and activities. We
promise people things, we open committee meetings, we propose to our lovers, we argue over
politics, and we ‘talk to God’…
Language allows us to be things. It allows us to take on different socially significant
identities. We can speak as experts—as doctors, lawyers, anime aficionados, or carpenters—
or as ‘everyday people’. To take on any identity at a given time and place we have to ‘talk the
talk’…” – Gee (2011)

Language is more than a neutral way of communicating, it’s deeply connected with actions
and personal identity, and can even shape the way we think about and understand the world.
Who we are, what we do, and our beliefs are all shaped by the language we use. This makes it
a very rich avenue for analysis.

What is discourse analysis?

Types of discourse analysis

Just like so many blanket qualitative terms, there are a lot of different practices and types of
analysis called ‘discourse’ analysis, and many different ways of applying them.

Hodges et al. (2008), Tannen et al. (2015) and Gee (2011) all propose different meta-types
of discourse analysis. All three type definitions broadly go from more face-value linguistic
analysis to socially conceptual analysis, but draw the lines in different places. Gee (2011)
only recognises two main categories of discourse analysis.

Hodges et al. (2008) Tannen et al. (2015) Gee (2011)

Formal linguistic discourse
analysis: looking at Discourse analysis that looks
Language use
words/phrases, grammar or at the use of words
semantics
Empirical discourse analysis:
Discourse analysis of anything
social practice constructed
beyond the sentence
through text)
Discourse analysis of a broader Critical discourse analysis:
Critical discourse analysis:
range of social practice that analysis of how language is
language constructing and
includes non-linguistic and non- situated in cultural and
limiting thought
specific instances of language contextual power dynamics

We will explore the definition of critical discourse analysis in more detail below. But before
we get there, let’s start with an example of some more obvious linguistic level discourse
analysis.

Example of discourse analysis

Imagine the following scenario from your favourite fictional medical drama. A patient is
wheeled into the ER/casualty unit, conscious but suffering from burns. The doctor attending
says three things:

To Patient: “We’re just going to give you a little injection to help with the pain.”

To Nurse: “10cc’s of sodium pentothal, stat!”

To Surgeon: “We’ve got severe second-degree chemical burns, GA administered”

In this situation, the doctor has said essentially the same thing 3 times, but each time using a
different response for each recipient. Firstly, when talking to the patient, the doctor doesn’t
use any medical terminology, and uses calming and minimising language to comfort the
patient. This is a classic type of discourse we are familiar with from medical TV dramas, the
‘good bed-side manner’.

To the nurse, the doctor has a different tone, more commanding and even condescending. It’s
a barked command, finished with the term ‘stat!’ - a commonly used medial slang word
(actually from the Latin word ‘statum’ meaning immediately, that’s your linguistic analysis!).
This is interesting, because it’s not a term you’d hear used in other professional places like a
busy kitchen. It shows there is a specific discourse for the setting (a hospital) and for different
people in the setting. The ‘10cc of sodium pentothal’ is a commonly used anaesthetic: the
same ‘something to help with the pain’ but now with a (trademarked) pharmacological name
and dose.

Finally, to the surgeon the same prescription is described by the doctor as an abbreviation
(GA for General Anaesthetic). Between senior health professionals, abbreviations might be
used more often, in this case actually hiding the specific drug given, perhaps on the basis that
the surgeon doesn’t need to know. It could also imply that since only that basic first step has
been made, there has been little assessment or intervention so far, telling to an experienced ear
what stage of the proceedings they are walking in on. The use of the term ‘we’ might imply
the doctor and surgeon are on the same level, as part of the team, a term not used when
addressing the nurse.

Even in this small example, there are a lot of different aspects of discourse to unpack. It is
very contextually dependent, none of the phrases or manners are likely to be adopted by the
doctor in the supermarket or at home. This shows how the identity and performativity of the
doctor is connected to their job (and shaped by it, and contextual norms). It also shows
differences in discourse between different actors, and power dynamics which are expressed
and created through discursive norms.

Different methods of discourse analysis

At a very basic level, we could probably do an interesting study on TV shows and the use of
the term ‘stat!’. We could look at how often the term was used, how often it was used by
doctors to nurses (often) and by nurses to doctors (rarely). This would probably be more like a
basic linguistic analysis, possibly even quantitative. It’s one of the few occasions that a
keyword search in a qualitative corpus can be useful – because you are looking at the use of a
single, non-replaceable word. If someone says ‘now please’ or ‘as soon as you can’ it has a
very different meaning and power dynamic, so we are not interested in synonyms here.
However, we probably still want to trawl through the whole text to look at different phrases
that are used, and why ‘stat!’ was not the command in all situations. This would be close to
the ‘formal linguistic’ approach listed above.

But a more detailed, critical and contextual examination of the discourse might show that
nurses struggle with out-moded power dynamics in hospitals (eg Fealy and McNamara 2007,
Turner et al 2007). Both of these papers are described as ‘critical’ discourse analysis.
However, this term is used in many different ways.

Critical discourse analysis is probably the most often cited, but often used in the most literal
sense – that it looks at discourse critically, and takes a comparative and critical analytic
stance. It’s another term like ‘grounded theory’ that is used as a catch-all for many different
nuanced approaches. But there is another ‘level’ of critical discourse analysis, influenced by
Foucault (1972, 1980) and others, that goes beyond reasons for use and local context, to
examine how thought processes in society are influenced by the control of language and
meanings.

Defining critical discourse analysis: the ‘hardcore mode’ of

discourse analysis?

“What we commonly accept as objective or obviously true is only so because of negotiated

agreement among people” – Gee (2011)

Language and discourse are not absolute. Gee (2011) notes at least three different ways that
the positionality of discourse can be shown to be constructed and non-universal. Meanings
and reality can change over time, between cultures, and finally with ‘discursive construction’
– due to power dynamics in setting language that controls how we understand concepts. Gee
uses the term ‘deconstruction’ in the Derridian sense of the word, advocating for the critical
examining and dismantling of unquestioned assumptions about what words mean and where
they come from.

But ‘deep’ critical discourse analysis also draws heavily from Foucault and an examination of
how language is a result of power dynamics, and that the discourse of society heavily
regulates what words are understood to mean, as well as who can use them. It also implies
that because of these systems of control, discourse is used to actually change and reshape
thought and expression. But the key jump is to understand and explain that “what we take to
be the truth about the world importantly depends on the social relationships of which we are a
part” (Gergen 2015). This is social construction, and a key part of the philosophy behind
much critical discourse analysis.

Example of critical discourse analysis

Think of the use of the term ‘freedom’ in mainstream and political discourse in the United
States. It is one of the most powerful words used by politicians, and has been for centuries (eg
Chanley and Chanley 2015) However, its use and meaning have changed over time, and what
different people from different parts of the political spectrum understand to be enshrined
under this concept can be radically different, and even exclusionary. Those in powerful
political and media positions are able to change the rhetoric around words like freedom, and
sub-terms like ‘freedom of speech’ and ‘freedom of religion’ are both being shifted in public
discourse, even on a daily basis, and taking our own internal concepts and ideas with them. It
may be that there has never been an age when so much power to manipulate discourse is
concentrated in so few places, and able to shift it so rapidly.

How to do discourse analysis

So how do we ‘do’ discourse analysis? How can we start examining complex qualitative data
from many voices from a point of view of discourse? Like so many qualitative analytical
techniques, researchers will usually adopt a blend of approaches: doing some elements of
linguistic analysis, as well as critical discourse analysis for some parts or research questions.
They may also draw on narrative and thematic analysis. But discourse analysis is often
comparative, it lends itself to differences in the use of language between individuals,
professionals and contexts.

From a practical point of view, it can be started by a close reading of key words and terms,
especially if it is not clear from the outset what the important and illustrative ones are going to
be. For building a complete picture of discourse, a line-by-line approach can be adopted, but
it’s also useful to use ‘codes’ or ‘themes’ to tag every use of some terms, or just significant
ones. A qualitative software tool like Quirkos can help you do this.

How to do critical discourse analysis

For critical discourse analysis, examination of primary data is rarely enough – it needs to be
deeply contextualised within the wider societal or environmental norms that govern a
particular subset of discourse. So policy and document analysis are often entwined and can be
analysed in the same project. From here, it’s difficult to describe a single technique further, as
it will greatly vary by type of source. It is possible in discourse analysis for a single sentence
or word to be the major focus of the study, or it may look widely across many different people
and data sources.