Social Text Analysis

1. Social Text Analysis

2. Social text analyses examine the meanings and uses of a given text.

3. Creating a Social Text • First, the researcher needs to identify a work or works of interest. • Second, from that work the researcher needs to construct a text. • This process is called textualization. • The researcher must remain faithful to the work. • Documents can be social texts. • Enacted talk, transcribed, can be a social text.

4. Transcribing Enacted Talk • Qualitative researchers generally transcribe their own work. • Transcription is not a neutral activity • The researcher becomes familiar with her data through transcription • The level of transcription will depend on the research purpose. • There are several principles guiding the transcription process (Edwards, 1993). • Principles of Category Design • Principles of Readability • Principles of Tractability

5. Communication Criticism(Sillars & Gronbeck, 2001) • Communication criticism describes a body of social approaches to the study of public messages. • There are three processes involved in communication criticism: • Textualization • Analysis • Interpretation • Some critical approaches include a fourth process, judgment. • There are three families of communication criticism: • The Rhetorical Tradition • The Social Tradition • Cultural Tradition

6. Discourse Analysis: Two Traditions • A structural perspective approaches discourse above the sentence level. • For example, utterances, conversations, accounts would be studied as discourse. • A functional perspective approaches the “use” of language. • What are the functions and purposes of discourse? • How is discourse situated in a cultural system?

7. Conversation Analysis • A type of discourse analysis • The origins are in ethnomethodology. • The study of naturally occurring interaction • Issues to consider (Pomerantz & Fehr, 1997): • Select a sequence of talk for study • Identify the actions in the sequence • Identify how the actions are performed. • Identify how timing and taking of turns construct certain understandings of the action. • Consider how the actions construct certain identities, roles, and relationships for the speakers.

8. The Narrative Approach • Meaning is constructed through stories. • Stories are structured by a beginning, middle, and end. • Researchers examine the process of storytelling: how a story is accomplished. • Researchers examine the form of a narrative, such as the structure, characterization, and narrative voice. • Researchers examine the content of narratives, such as the themes and meanings.

9. Performative/Dramatistic Approaches • Performance studies conceives communication as performance. • The researcher is both a tool for understanding and performing. • Communication is an embodied performance – scholarship, then is embodied. • Researchers also examine the performances of others.

10. A Semiotic Approach • Semiotics is the study of the signification process. • Signification is the process by which signs are conveyed with meaning.