Analyzing Text and Discourse: Eight Approaches for the Social Sciences

A unique anthology of textual analysis methodologies, this book offers a thorough introduction to the key approaches and the tools students need to implement them.

Every chapter contains not just the theory behind each methodology, but also its advantages and disadvantages, its problems with ontology and language, and its relationship to studying social phenomenon. Through contemporary and relatable real-world worked examples, the book illustrates different contexts in which a methodology has been successfully used and allows students to see the methods in action and extrapolate the techniques into their own research.

Methods included:

• Content analysis
• Argumentation analysis
• Qualitative analysis of ideas
• Narrative analysis
• Metaphor analysis
• Multimodal discourse analysis
• Discourse analysis

Engaging and authoritative in equal measure, this guide to textual analysis is the perfect foundation for students conducting research in the social sciences.

Kristina Boréus is Professor of Political Science at Uppsala University, Sweden. She has studied ideology and ideological change, discrimination against migrants and racialized employees at Swedish workplaces, and right-wing populism in Austria, Denmark, and Sweden. Her publications in English include ‘Patterned Inequalities and the Inequality Regime of a Swedish Housing Company’ (with Ulf Mörkenstam, 2015, in Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies); ‘Nationalism and Discursive Discrimination against Immigrants in Austria, Denmark and Sweden’ (2013, in Wodak, R., KhosraviNik, M. & Mral, B. (eds) Right-Wing Populism in Europe, Bloomsbury Academic) and ‘Discursive Discrimination: A Typology’ (2006, in European Journal of Social Theory). She takes an interest in different kinds of textual analysis as method and theory and has published Textens mening och makt (with Göran Bergström, Studentlitteratur), a Swedish textbook that appeared in its third edition in 2012.

Göran Bergström is Assistant Professor in Political Science, Department of Political Science, at Stockholm University, Sweden. For a long time he was Director of Education. He has studied ideological change in Education Policy and with particular interest in the Swedish Labour Party. Recent publications include articles in Pedagogical content knowledge, more specifically how the relation between Content knowledge and Pedagocical content knowledge is developed in Social science/Civics research projects (with Linda Ekström, Nordidactica – Journal of Humanities and Social Science Education 2015, (1)). He has also recently studied how a central core value in the Swedish educational system has been interpretated among school leaders (with Linda Ekström, Utbildning & Demokrati 2/2016). Göran Bergström has published Textens mening och makt (with Kristina Boréus, Studentlitteratur), a Swedish textbook, third edition 2012.