discoursanalyse

Discoursanalyse, or discourse analysis, is a family of qualitative methods for studying language in social context. It investigates discourses—systems of statements, practices, and ideologies—and how they shape and reflect social identities, power relations, and institutions. Rather than treating sentences in isolation, discourse analysis examines language across talks and texts to understand how meaning is produced, negotiated, and acted upon.

Origins lie in linguistics, sociology, and anthropology, with strands such as conversational analysis (CA), which studies the structure of talk, and critical discourse analysis (CDA), which analyzes how language reproduces or challenges power and ideology. Other approaches include corpus-based discourse analysis, which uses large text datasets to identify patterns, and ethnographic or interactional methods that study language in context.

Data sources vary: political speeches, news, policy documents, classroom discourse, interviews, and online communication. The analytic process typically involves data selection, transcription, coding, and interpretive analysis, with careful attention to context, audience, and social impact, as well as researcher reflexivity.

Applications span media studies, political communication, education, gender studies, and sociolinguistics, among others. Researchers may combine qualitative interpretation with quantitative measures, such as word frequencies or collocation patterns, to support inferences.

Limitations include methodological diversity, potential subjectivity, and debates about objectivity and causality. When applied rigorously, discourse analysis illuminates how language constructs reality, power, and social change.

See also: critical discourse analysis; conversation analysis; corpus linguistics; pragmatics; discourse.