discourse analysis: textual contextual sociological

Discourse Analysis

Dr Sally Jones

Lecturer in Enterprise

Leeds Enterprise Centre

Leeds University Business School

[email protected]

ISBE Gender and Enterprise Network (GEN) – 13th March 2014

Session Overview1. What is Discourse Analysis

2. Why is it useful/important?

3. Types of Discourse Analysis:� Big ‘D’

� Little ‘d’

� Difference between text and speech

4. Levels of Discourse Analysis:� Textual

� Contextual� Contextual

� Sociological

5. Examples of/approaches to Gender Discourse Analysis in research:� Ahl (2004) – Gendered Discourse in entrepreneurship research

� Gaucher et al (2011) – Gendered Discourse in job advertisements

6. Some tools/frameworks for discourse analysis (Group Activity):� Bem’s Sex Role Inventory (BRSI)

� Brine’s 3-stage, 10-step approach to discourse analysis

7. Operationalising frameworks/tools in discourse analysis� Jones & Warhuss (2014) – Gendering of HE Entrepreneurship Course Descriptions

8. Questions/discussion


What is Discourse Analysis?

“Discourse analysis focuses on knowledge about language beyond the

word, clause, phrase and sentences needed for successful

communication. It looks at patterns of language across texts and

considers the relationship between language and the social and

cultural contexts in which it is used. (It) also considers the ways

that the use of language presents different views of the world and

different understandings. It examines how the use of language is

influenced by relationships between participants as well as the

effects the use of language has upon social identities and

relations. It also considers how views of the world, and

identities are constructed through the use of discourse (and)

examines both spoken and written texts.”(Paltridge, 2006 p.2)


Why is this useful/important?

“…the exercise, production, and accumulation of knowledge cannot be dissociated from the power mechanisms with which they maintain

complex relations that must be analysed.”Foucault (1994 [1978],p.291)

“…discourse is a structured and structuring medium tending to impose an apprehension of the established order as natural (orthodoxy) through the

disguised…imposition of structures of classification and of mental disguised…imposition of structures of classification and of mental structures that are objectively adjusted to social structures.”

Bourdieu (1991) p.169

“Discourse… is both shaped by the world as well as shaping the world” (Paltridge, 2006)

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) aims to show non-obvious ways in which language is involved with social relations of power and domination.

(Fairclough, 2003)


Types of Discourse“What is important is not language…but saying (writing)-doing-being-valuing-

believing combinations” (Gee, 2012 p.142)

‘little d’ discourse = connected stretches of language that make sense, like conversations, stories, reports, arguments, essays.

‘Big D’ Discourse = always more than just language. Discourses are ways of being in the world, or forms of life which integrate words, acts, values, beliefs, attitudes, social identities. beliefs, attitudes, social identities.

Big D Discourses have the power to construct social reality:

“A Discourse is a sort of 'identity kit' which comes complete with the appropriate costume and instructions on how to act, talk, and often write,

so as to take on a particular social role that others will recognize…they crucially involve a set of values and viewpoints about the relationships

between people and the distribution of social goods”

” (Gee, 2012 p.142 - 143)


Suggested differences between spoken

and written discourse (Paltridge, 2006 pp.13 - 18)

1. Grammatical intricacy – written texts are more complex

2. Lexical density - ratio of content words to to grammatical or functional words

3. Nominalization - presenting actions and events as nouns rather than as verbs

4. Explicitness - Writing is more explicit than speech.

5. Contextualization - Writing is more decontextualized than speech as speech

depends on a shared situation and background for interpretationdepends on a shared situation and background for interpretation

6. Spontaneity - Spoken discourse lacks organisation, contains more

uncompleted and reformulated sentences, topics can be changed, subject to

interruptions and overlaps

7. Repetition, hesitations, and redundancy – Spoken discourse happens in real

time, pauses and filler, ummms and aaahs.

However these distinctions are disputed (Halliday, 1989)


McCarthy’s Continuum (McCarthy, 2001)

Published Academic Papers

Prepared

Academic

Personal

letters/emailsCasual

Grammatical Complexity

Tightly packed and integrated………………………………………………………Fragmented and disjointed



Academic

Lectures

letters/emailsCasual

conversations

McCarthy’s Continuum (McCarthy, 2001)

Public Notices

Policy DocumentsPrepared

Academic

Casual

Conversations

Detachment/Inter-personal Involvement

Detached…………………………………………………………………………………..Inter-personally involved

InterviewsPolicy Documents



Academic

Lectures

Conversations

Personal

letters/emails

to friends

Interviews

Presentations

Levels of Sociological Discourse Analysis

Levels of

analysis

View of

discourse

Utterance/word

level

Methods/

procedures of

analysis

Objectives

Textual analysis As object Utterance/word

level

•Content analysis

•Semiotic analysis

Characterization

of discourse

Contextual

analysis

As singular

event

Enunciation level •Frame analysis

•Analysis of

Understanding

the discourse


analysis event •Analysis of

discourse positions

•Intertextual

analysis

the discourse

Sociological

interpretation

As

information,

ideology and

social product

Social level •Inductive

•Abductive

(Sociological)

explanation of

discourse

(Adapted from Ruiz, 2009)

Levels of Sociological Discourse Analysis(Ruiz, 2009 )


Example of Gender Discourse Analysis (1)

Ahl, H. (2004) The Scientific Reproduction of Gender Inequality: A Discourse Analysis of Research Texts on

Women’s Entrepreneurship Malmo, Koege, Herndon VA, Abingdon: Copenhagen Business School Press

Analysed 81 entrepreneurship journal papers:

Construction of the female entrepreneur

Construction of entrepreneurship


Three Constructs:

“Entrepreneurship is good”

“Men and women are different”

“The division between a public and private sphere of life”

Example of Gender Discourse Analysis (1)

Text Analysis Techniques used by Ahl (2004 p.203)

1. Content analysis – quantifying elements in the text

2. Argumentation analysis – how people persuade, the power of or lack of

an argument

3. Idea and ideology analysis – describing, analyzing or revealing

ideologies

4. Linguistic text analysis – studying language as carrier of conscious or


4. Linguistic text analysis – studying language as carrier of conscious or

unreflected meaning (e.g. metaphors)

5. Discourse analysis:

1. Discourse Theory – discursive struggles, competing discourses

2. Critical discourse analysis – social change, how discourses change

over time

3. Discourse psychology – production of social and personal identities

with social effects

Examples of Gender Discourse Analysis (2) Gaucher, D. et al. (2011)

Methodology (study one of five):1, 493 randomly sampled online job advertisements from typically male-and female-dominated occupations were coded for the use of masculinised and femininised words.

Lists of masculine and feminine words were created using published lists of agentic and communal words and masculine and feminine trait words.of agentic and communal words and masculine and feminine trait words.

Using content analysis software gave each advertisement masculine and feminine scores, representing the percentage of total masculine and feminine words in each.

Findings:• Masculinised discourse used in adverts for male-dominated jobs

• Situational cues about the the ‘type’ of person the advert is aimed at

• Reproduces and perpetuates gendered job segregation


Examples of Gender Discourse Analysis (2) Gaucher et al (2001) List of Masculine and Feminine Words Coded

Masculine Words Feminine Words

Active

Adventurous

Aggress*

Ambitio*

Commit

Analy*

Assert

Athlet

Decisive

Decision

Determin*

Dominant

Domina*

Force

Greedy

Headstrong

Lead

Logic

Masculine

Objective

Opinion

Outspoken

Persist

Principle

Affectionate

Child

Cheer

Communal

Compassion

Considerate

Depend

Cooperat*

Interpersona*

Kind

Kinship

Loyal

Nag

Nurtur*

Pleasant

Polite

Together

Trust

Understand

Warm

Whin*

Yield

Note. The asterisk denotes the acceptance of all letters, hyphens, or numbers following its appearance.


Athlet

Connect*

Autonom*

Boast

Challeng

Compet*

Confident

Courag*

Decide

Headstrong

Hierarch

Modesty

Hostil*

Impulsive

Independen*

Individual

Intellect

Principle

Reckless

Stubborn

Superior

Self-

confiden*

Self-

sufficien*

Self-relian*

Cooperat*

Emotiona*

Empath*

Feminine

Flatterable

Gentle

Honest

Interdepende

n*

Polite

Quiet

Respon*

Sensitiv*

Submissive

Support

Sympath*

Tender

Tools/FrameworksBem’s Sex Role Inventory (BRSI) (1974)

Used in Ahl and Gaucher et al’s work (albeit either adapted or in addition to to other approaches)

Bem was interested in androgyny but the study showed strong associations between certain words/actions/behaviours and gender (masculinity and femininity)

Has been revisited and reevaluated e.g. in 1998 (Holt and Ellis ), 2000 (Auster and Ohm) and 2009 (Colley et al) and still appears to be (Auster and Ohm) and 2009 (Colley et al) and still appears to be relevant and valid (although changes in scores do appear to reflect some changes in perceived desirablity of some behaviours)

Brine’s Three stage, Ten step approach (2008)

Originally designed for analysing policy documents

Provides a transparent and repeatable analytical process

Used in my PhD - Jones (2013) ISBJ paper ‘Fictive Student and Fictive Entrepreneur’


Tools/FrameworksGroup Activity

In small groups discuss:

1: Your current research

2: Have you used discourse analysis? If so, how?2: Have you used discourse analysis? If so, how?

3: How might discourse analysis support your research/help you to explore

your research questions?

Read the Bem and Brine handouts and discuss:

1: How could you employ either/or both of these tools within your

methodological approach?

2: What are the potential pros and cons of these two analytical tools?


Operationalising Tools/Frameworks

Jones and Warhuus (2014) How Do Educators Construct the Fictive Student Entrepreneur? A gendered discourse analysis of entrepreneurship course

descriptions

Research questions:

1. Given the critique of entrepreneurship as masculinised, is this reflected in course descriptions for entrepreneurship education programs/modules in course descriptions for entrepreneurship education programs/modules in higher education?

2. How is the Fictive entrepreneurship education student constructed in course descriptions? What language do educators use to construct the student who will be benefit from or do well in entrepreneurship education?

3. How do educators construct entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship in course descriptions? Does this have the potential to position different groups of students in different ways?



Jones and Warhuus (2014) How Do Educators Construct the Fictive Student Entrepreneur? A gendered discourse analysis of entrepreneurship course descriptions

Methodology:

Analysis of entrepreneurship course descriptions:

Used in the past academic year or approved for the next academic year

Not a random sample (our biases might be evident in the search terms):

1. Solicited the “ENTREP” email list maintained by the entrepreneurship division of the Academy of Management for course description and syllabi by posting an email to ENTREP as a regular list member.

2. University websites of the home institutions of corresponding authors of papers presented at the European conference RENT 2013 were searched for published course description or syllabi.

3. where step two did not yield a course description, the corresponding author was contacted by email.

4. Although US based steps 2 and 3 are being considered for use with the Kauffman/Babson 2013 conference’s corresponding authors



Methodology (framed by Brine’s 10-step approach):

All course descriptions (25 so far) were converted to readable pdf files and imported into Nvivo.

Step one:

a) Descriptions were coded based on “demographics”

b) Nvivo word frequency query facility used on the entire data set to extract words, stemmed words, synonyms, and generalizations

c) Word clouds for each query were generated

Step two:Step two:

a) The descriptions were coded to extract all descriptive text about the course, what students could expect to learn, etc.

b) The extracted descriptive language was analysed separately in an Nvivo "node" container using the same battery of queries and word cloud formations

Step three:

The extracted key sections of the descriptions was subjected to 60 word searches for each of the 30 masculine and feminine words from Bem’s Sex Role Inventory: A 1-to-5 ratio of feminine to masculine hit rate was found.

Step four:

Problems with BRSI words – some are ‘concepts’ not readily applicable to entrepreneurship

Used Ahl’s (2004) adaptation of BRSI

25 course descriptions collected for analysis so far (international scope) – aim for 100+


Questions?Comments?Questions?Comments?


References:Ahl, H. (2004) The Scientific Reproduction of Gender Inequality: A Discourse Analysis of Research Texts on Women’s Entrepreneurship Malmo,

Koege, Herndon VA, Abingdon: Copenhagen Business School Press

Antaki, C. Billig, M., Edwards,D. & Potter, D (2002) Discourse Analysis Means Doing Analysis: A Critique Of Six Analytic Shortcomings Discourse

Analysis Online Available at: http://extra.shu.ac.uk/daol/articles/v1/n1/a1/antaki2002002-paper.html Accessed 9 March 2014

Auster, C. J. and Ohm, S. C. (2000) Masculinity and Femininity in Contemporary American Society: A Reevaluation Using the Bem Sex-Role

Inventory Sex Roles, Vol. 43, Nos. 7/8 499 – 528

Bem, S. L. (1974). The measurement of psychological androgyny. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 42, 155–162.

Bourdieu, P. (1991) Language and Symbolic Power Translated by Gino Raymond and Matthew Adamson Oxford: Polity Press

Brine, J. (2008) Ten Steps Policy Analysis: Constructed subjects and dominant discourses Available at:

http://eprints.uwe.ac.uk/14002/4/Reading_the_Text_-_08-1.pdf Accessed 9 March 2014

Colley, A. et al (2009) The short form BSRI: Instrumentality, expressiveness and gender associations among a United Kingdom sample

Personality and Individual Differences 46 p.384–387

Fairclough, N. (2003) Analysing Discourse: Textual analysis for social research Abingdon, New York: Routledge

Foucault, M. (1994 [1978]) in J.D. Faubion (Ed.) Essential Works of Foucault 1954-1984, vol.3: power London: Penguin

Gaucher, D. et al. 2011. Evidence that gendered wording in job advertisements exists and sustains gender inequality. Journal of personality and Gaucher, D. et al. 2011. Evidence that gendered wording in job advertisements exists and sustains gender inequality. Journal of personality and

social psychology. 101(1),pp.109–28.

Gee, J. P. (2012) Social Linguistics and Literacies: Ideology in Discourses, Critical Perspectives on Literacy and Education. Fourth Edition. Abingdon

and New York, NY: Taylor and Francis.

Halliday, M. A. K. (1989) Spoken and Written Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press

Holt, C. L. and Ellis, J. B. (1998) Assessing the Current Validity of the Bem Sex-Role Inventory Sex Roles, Vol. 39, Nos. 11/12

Jones, S. and Warhuus, J. (2014) How Do Educators Construct the Fictive Student Entrepreneur? A gendered discourse analysis of

entrepreneurship course descriptions. Refereed paper presented at the 2nd international ECSB Entrepreneurship Education Conference,

Turku, Finland 9-11 April, 2014

Jones, S. (2012) Gendered discourses of entrepreneurship in UK higher education: The fictive entrepreneur and the fictive student International

Small Business Journal 30(8)

McCarthy, M. (2001) Issues in Applied Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press

Paltridge, B. (2006) Discourse Analysis London and Nw York, NY: Continuum

Ruiz, J. R. (2009) Sociological Discourse Analysis: Methods and Logic Forum: Qualitative Social Research Volume 10, No. 2, Art. 26 Available at:

http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/1298/2882 Accessed 9 March 2014

Sunderland, J. (2004) Gendered Discourses Basingstoke and New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan

Wodak, R. & Meyer, M. (2009) (Eds.) Methods for Critical Discourse Analysis London; Thousand Oaks, CA; New Delhi & Singapore: Sage

Publications ISBE Gender and Enterprise Network (GEN) – 13th March 2014