Doing Discourse Analysis

This book is about doing discourse analysis. Its focus is on method, but the method is embedded in a wider theoretical perspective on social life, in the view of language as action, in the recognition that the social world revolves around talk (and writing). What is it that we accomplish by talking? Can we reconceptualize such traditional concepts as attribution and personality in discursive terms or shed light on applied topics, such as sexual abuse and legal adjudication? Doing Discourse Analysis: Methods for Studying Action in Talk and Text draws on conversation analysis, critical discourse analysis, pragmatics, and particularly, the discursive approach developed in social psychology. The book presents examples of actual discourse analyses, covers procedures of data collection and strategies for data analysis, and addresses issues of reliability and validity or the scientific warrants for discourse-analytic work. This book provides both the practical steps for doing discourse analysis and the theoretical justifications for these steps. It is an essential book for students and researchers undertaking discourse analysis.