Submission to Discourse Analysis Online

Discourse Analysis Means

Analysing Discourse: Some
Comments On Antaki, Billig,
Edwards And Potter 'Discourse
Analysis Means Doing Analysis:
A Critique Of Six Analytic
Shortcomings'
Erica Burman

Discourse Unit/Women's Studies Research Centre

Department of Psychology and Speech Pathology
Manchester Metropolitan University
Gaskell Campus
Hathersage Road
Manchester M13 0JA

e.burman@mmu.ac.uk
http://www.did.stu.mmu.ac.uk/psy_speech/research/discourse/dustaff.
htm

Abstract: In this paper I discuss the 'six analytic shortcomings' of

discourse analytic work identified by Antaki et al. as concerned with
contextual and part-whole relations. I then move on to offer three more
addressing questions of location: under-analysis through uncontested
readings, under-analysis through decontextualisation and underanalysis
through not having a question. I suggest that, while Antaki et al. have
usefully highlighted some prevalent limitations on current, especially
introductory, work put forward as discourse analysis, their analysis
benefits from some further elaboration in order to acknowledge and
refer to the wider spectrum of discursive approaches.

Keywords: template, DAOL submissions

1. Introduction
Antaki et al.'s paper offers welcome illustrations of weaknesses that I
recognise only too well within some contemporary (including student)
purported discourse analyses. My comments here arise from a general
sense of sympathy and agreement with their arguments, and are offered
in the spirit of supplementing rather than supplanting them. I will
therefore be drawing on, and then elaborating on, the framework
provided by their paper to offer three more examples of forms of
analysis that fail to fulfil claims to discursive analyses (or what Antaki et
al. calls 'non-analyses').

Antaki et al. declare two reasons for highlighting these problems: firstly,
to 'help those who approach DA enthusiastically, but in an environment
where there is less support than there would be for more traditional
methods of analysis, and so less opportunity to test and refine methods
among sympathetic colleagues' (p.15); and second, 'to scotch the sort
of errors that give comfort to the traditionally-minded who accuse DA of
"anything goes"' (ibid.). While (as I will discuss later) there are many
responses to the 'anything goes' argument (see also Burman, 1990,
Burman, 1991, Burman, 1992), my previous attention to the 'errors' or
shortcomings of novice engagements with discursive and qualitative
research has focused on how these highlight with particular clarity
ideological as well as conceptual and methodological features of the
discipline, and contests within the discipline, that researchers new to the
arena are labouring to join (Burman, 1996, Burman, 1997, Burman,
1998).

Like Antaki et al., my comments here are similarly offered to lend

support to, as well as to strengthen the profile of, the wide range of
analytic research that currently qualifies itself as discursive. As will
become clear, my discussion diverges from that of Antaki et al. in
suggesting, firstly, that they do not go far enough in identifying
limitations of currently circulating forms of discourse analyses; secondly,
that, paradoxically, the restrictions on the critical account they offer
potentially work to proscribe forms of discourse analytic work that I
would want to see supported; and thirdly and finally, that their
argument bolsters a limited notion of discourse (as transcribed interview
text) that unduly forecloses the political as well as analytic project of
discursive research. I will start by revisiting the six problems identified
by Antaki et al., and then move on to highlight three more that I would
want to add. I should reiterate that I am fully in agreement with their
desire to emphasise 'the analytic basis to discursive studies' (p.3).
Indeed equivalent concerns motivate my account here.

2. Contextual Questions
The first problem they discuss is where a summary or descriptive
account of the transcript seems to be offered as a substitute for an
analysis. Antaki et al. suggest that this approach 'will lose information
and add none' (p.8), including being 'likely to lose the detail and
discursive subtlety of the original' (ibid.). Whilst in full agreement with
the specific examples of this they provide (of how the summary strips
away important cues provided by the ordering of the account and
paralinguistic features included within the transcription conventions),
two further points might be added.
Firstly such 'summarising' might also inadvertently work to
decontextualise the analyst's own account. Not only would this be to
return its claims to those more familiar parameters of positivist and
objectivist psychological research. It would also thereby be masking the
political position adopted by the commentator in her or his framing of
the account. I will return to this point shortly in relation to the second
'non-analytic' strategy Antaki et al. discuss. On their first point, though,
there is a further issue, which is: where is the analysis of the analytic
framework? Any analysis (discursive or otherwise) has to be undertaken
in relation to a declared set of theoretical presuppositions as well as
specific questions generated in relation to these, which provide the basis
on which the analysis can be evaluated. Any 'summary' proffering
decontextualised truth claims simply bolsters common sense or, worse
still, expert (for example, 'psychological') knowledge. While Antaki et
al.'s transcript, and discussion of transcript conventions, offers some
useful examples and techniques, they too assume an analytic framework
that is not declared.
The second form of 'non-analysis' characterised by Antaki et al. is where
the analyst's opinions or political commitments substitute for the
analysis. This is said to 'lead to the sort of simplification that is the
antithesis of analysis …produc[ing] a flattening of the discursive
complexity, as the analyst selects quotations for the rhetorical effect of
appealing to the readers as co-sympathises or co-scolders' (p.10). This
recognisable weakness is particularly worthwhile to point out. Here,
though, I would want to add two further points, the first of which is that
it can also be a problem to presume that one can avoid 'taking sides' or
engaging in strategies of 'enlistment' (p.8): both through the form of
the analytic framework that is adopted, as well as through the form of
language in which the analysis is presented. Whilst clearly (now claiming
my own 'expert' status!), as I have indicated elsewhere (Burman, 1991,
Burman, 1997 and Burman, 1998) reflexive analysis does not substitute
for analysis, nevertheless the 'solidarity/hostility' or 'sympathy/scolding'
dichotomies noted by Antaki et al. (on p.9) are inevitably to some
extent present within the analytic account - albeit that, as feminist
analyses have indicated, our malestream academic trainings have
perhaps schooled us into failing to recognise lack of commitment as a
subjective position (c.f. Henwood et al., 1998; Hollway 1989).
Objectivity is not the absence of subjectivity but a particular form of it.
Put simply, there is no way of avoiding adopting some kind of position.
The question therefore is rather which, and on what grounds this is
evaluated.
Secondly, just as we may show an inappropriate 'solidarity' or
'sympathy' (or indeed presuming the transparency of the account by
claiming access to 'feelings', 'beliefs' or 'views') by (in Antaki et al.'s
examples on p.9) discussing how a speaker 'realises' or 'appreciates',
sometimes the language of 'stating', 'claiming' or 'goes on to speak
about' which are less 'value-laden' descriptions that we are familiar with
in discursive work - as labelling speech acts rather than intentional
states - also produces 'rhetorical effects'. But these 'effects' are of an
ironizing character that in some ways - especially to those new to
discourse analysis and so importing their everyday language practices -
appears to devalue the speaker's account because it implies that
something else is being manifested through it. Now this of course
illustrates some of the humanist objections to discursive work that in my
view are usually misplaced and arise from a mis-conceptualisation of the
purpose of discourse work - which is not to focus on individuals but
rather the cultural frameworks of meaning that they reproduce.
However, my point here is that we need to take seriously how the tools
of our own discursive practice inevitably speak of their own
assumptions, and failure to attend to these can lead us back towards
precisely the kinds of decontextualised and objectivist claims to
knowledge that discourse work in psychology was formulated to critique
(cf. Burman and Parker, 1993; Burman et al, 1996; Parker, 2002).
Finally, while Antaki et al. take pains to point out their recognition of a
diversity of positions among discursive researchers as to the desirability
of taking sides, my arguments here would invite a further qualification
that 'enlistment' is not in itself a problem, and that 'taking sides' is not
the same as under-analysis. Whilst all analyses require the kind of
detailed examination indicated by Antaki et al., it could further be
argued that under-analysis occurs when the analysis substitutes detailed
examination of the text for the adoption of a theorised position.
3. Questions Of Part-Whole
Relations
Antaki et al.'s fourth point concerns under-analysis though over-
quotation or isolated quotation, both of which are familiar within weak
examples of discourse analysis. Yet there is a danger that we may be
closing off the potential range of interesting and relevant discursive
analyses if we offer without qualification technical norms about the 'ratio
of analyst's comments to data extracts' (p.10). What about approaches
to discourse analysis that include a performative or poetic character, in
which the analysis is explicitly selectively crafted towards a specific
audience for a specific intervention? An example of this would include
the research recently completed by Burns (2001) of performing back to
a collective audience of her activist participants the edited (and thereby
analysed) versions of their own accounts. This functioned not only as a
form of poetic presentation but also of organisational analysis, that also
fulfilled commitments of making the academic research accountable to
the researched. Much feminist and action research draws on equivalent
(if possibly less dramatic) forms, and discourse work surely has a key
contribution here in making interpretations explicit and accountable and
thereby making use of its intervention.
Further, the 'profiling' process that Antaki et al. identify as underlying
several of the under-analyses they discuss, including where quotations
are 'pieced together' (p.11) from different respondents, is said to
potentially 'impede analysis by removing utterances from their
discursive context' (ibid.). Here we need to pause to consider what
conceptual framework defines the 'discursive context'. Opinions between
discourse analysts on this matter vary significantly. But perhaps we
could agree that such a context should be explicitly identified.
Antaki et al.'s following discussion of '[t]he circular discovery of a)
discourses and b) mental constructs' (p.11) helpfully illuminates some
familiar limitations of under-analysed discourse work, and my
concurrence with their points is already indicated in my comments
above. However, it might be useful to include a further 'analytic extra'
(p.11) element to provide a way out of the 'circularity' of warranting an
interpretation via simply re-describing what is said in the text. This
would be to elaborate the analysis or categories to relate to structures
outside the detail of the text, for example via analysis of institutional
practices and systemic patternings. So, far from merely being
designated a theme (p.8), 'gender inequality in marriage' might be
drawn upon as one of various institutional analyses under interrogation
throughout the interview transcript. Clearly discursive analysts vary in
their claims as to what lies inside and outside the text (see e.g. Parker,
1998, for a review). Notwithstanding this, I would suggest that proper
analysis should not only 'consult the relevant previous research on all
these conversational moves and apply the accumulated insights to the
present data' (Antaki et al., p.14), but that this also includes consulting
theoretical analyses of a historical and cultural kind that inform how
such conversational moves come to be possible, and how they function.
How are we able to recognise the theme of 'gender equality in
marriage', for example, except by drawing on common sense and other
contested cultural resources in circulation around us as embodied and
historically and culturally located analysts.
As regards the charges of 'mentalism', perhaps it is helpful to remind
ourselves that some such varieties of mentalism will always inevitably
creep back into our accounts. Antaki et al. themselves impute mentalism
when they write of discourses being 'drawn upon to deal with specific
features of the conversational interaction' (p12) and that the
'respondent knows that they are expected to … in order to avoid
appearing dogmatic and to gain recognition' (p.14). Indeed perhaps the
issue is not only to struggle to avoid mentalistic categories of analysis
(since they return us to the traditional individualist psychology we have
tried to escape) but rather to attend to the kinds of mentalism being
imputed. The framework implicitly put forward by Antaki et al. imputes a
mentalism of a dramaturgical, but nevertheless voluntarist, kind that
retains the dichotomy between individual agency and determinism.
Unless supplemented by other (less voluntarist) accounts of the
construction of subjectivity, this offers little alternative to more
traditional psychological approaches.
The sixth under-analysis discussed by Antaki et al. arises through 'false
survey'. There clearly are dangers of generalisation from the specificity
of one discursive context to others (reminiscent of many discussions
about the relevance and reformulation of the criterion of
'representativeness' as a criterion for evaluating qualitative research).
Here it would be useful to add that there are equal dangers in failing to
situate the text within the cultural-historical conditions that gave rise to
it. For this, one needs an analytic framework that permits the
conceptualisation of how the talk (if such is the text) has arisen in terms
of broader institutional practices. Here two further points might be made
about Antaki et al.'s account. Firstly, that it seems somewhat
paradoxical to have been offered access to an MP3 recording of the
interaction, yet to have been provided with no information of the
circumstances in which the interview was conducted, nor the research
question (or other purpose) that gave rise to it. Here I do not mean to
be unfair - for I think it is perfectly acceptable that the material is
offered as a medium from which to illustrate under- or non-analysis,
without actually providing an analysis. Rather my point is that the
generosity of contextual framing we are offered is nevertheless still
partial. To this end I would suggest that contextual information
regarding the historical moment, cultural setting, institutional position of
the interview, and gender (as well as other structural positions) of
participants would be more informative with respect to generating and
evaluating an analysis than hearing the recording (cf. Burman et al.,
1996). Perhaps we are drawn into the metaphysics of presence of in
seeming able to 'replay' the interview? But surely without this other
information aspects of the contextual specificity of the 'original' moment
are obscured, while what is added to it by the process of iteration is
equally left out of the analysis.
Secondly, and perhaps this is an aside, but I was surprised by the
attribution (on pages 14 and 16) of 'unconscious' motivations to account
for the implicit or artefactual character of these analytic difficulties.
Surely, just as with its psychoanalytic application, such attribution
implies an individual origin and motivation, rather than an institutional
analysis accounting for how such difficulties so readily arise (of the role
of methodological technologies in psychology, for example).
Antaki et al.'s final example of 'under-analysis' is characterised as
'spotting'. As they note: 'research does not and should not, consist
principally of feature-spotting, just as analysing the history and
functions of the railway system cannot be accomplished through train-
spotting' (p.15). The point that 'feature-spotting' may well indicate some
acquaintance with particular literatures and techniques of analysis, but
does not in itself constitute the analysis, is particularly valuable. Yet
even here the critique itself takes the technology of vision (and its
metaphorical resources) for granted. This threatens to naturalise - or
take for granted - which 'features' there are to 'spot', and thereby
leaving out of the investigation the very conceptual frameworks (optics?
Surveillance? Etc…).that specify such items and render them 'visible'.
They conclude this point by arguing that 'good analysis always moves
convincingly back and forth between the general and the specific'. There
can be no disagreement with this, yet a key word here that invites a
further discussion and disputes over analysis is 'convincing'. What is
'convincing' to whom, and why? 'Conviction' here would seem to stand
for a whole set of discussions around criteria used to justify analysis that
would be a key task for the analyst to address. Further, what is meant
by 'the general' here? This leads me to put forward some further issues.

4. Three Further Points:

Questions Of Location
Having addressed myself to Antaki et al.'s six key points, in part by
extending them, I move briefly now to add three to them. A seventh
would be under-analysis through uncontested readings. Rather than
formulating a monovocal account, good discursive analyses acknowledge
the multiple and contested character of the interplay of discourses by
showing how different discursive representations are built to interact
with and ward off others. They have their own integrity of categories (in
the sense that subject positions are elaborated in complementary ways)
but these are frequently contested (if only to refute and reassert them)
within any text. Highlighting such contests provides some internal
reliability regarding the function and effects of any analysis, and the
better discourse analyses that I have more recently encountered have
formulated, or else demonstrated consideration of, several alternative
ways of conceptualising the discursive domain under analysis.
An eighth proposition would be under-analysis through
decontextualisation, whether this decontextualisation is on the part of
the analyst in their account, or of their representation of the text. This
point connects with my comments about lack of engagement, by which I
mean the need to situate the text and one's analysis of it socially,
historically, culturally and politically. While it is clearly logically
impossible (as well as probably undesirable) to claim to identify the
'whole context' of the text, the issue is to provide both a rationale for it
as a meaningful text to analyse (how it has come about, why it is
important, who has which kinds of stake in it, and why and how), and to
indicate the stance from which the analysis is conducted. Doing this
helps to ward off the incipient objectivism that dogs so much
psychological research, and (as I discuss in Burman, 1992, Burman,
1998), it also wards off the corresponding alternative (but equally
mistaken) position of subjectivism. To use Antaki et al.'s phrase
'insightful and technically sophisticated work' (p. 16) can also, and I
would argue inevitably, includes being politically committed and
institutionally located. The alternative to 'anything goes' is surely not
'nothing goes'.
My final - but perhaps most important - addition is perhaps one that was
assumed or taken for granted by Antaki et al., but I think is still worth
making explicit: under-analysis through not having a question. The most
uninteresting and weak examples of discourse work that I have
encountered principally founder through the failure to specify why this
analysis is being done, and is worth doing. Just as under-analysis, as
Antaki et al. so well highlight, arises through presumption and
premature selection of quotations and correspondingly unwarranted
interpretation, it can also arise through an insufficiency of critical
selectivity on the part of the analyst. In this respect the production of
the data is actually necessary to the analysis, and we might expect
innovative forms of data collection to always operate already
analytically.

5. In conclusion….
Antaki et al. have provided six useful and illustrations of unnecessary
limitations within current examples of discourse analysis. I have here
commented on and elaborated upon these six to propose a further three
(and doubtless the list could continue). Perhaps the list of 'shortcomings'
needs to get longer, or even to become less linear and instead wind
itself into a spiral, or double helix, or preferably some more open-ended
kind of structure - so that evaluating particular advantages and
limitations of each analytic strategy or point depends not only where
you are, but also when...
Antaki et al. seem to have made efforts to formulate their account to
connect with and be relevant to the broad range of discursive work
currently in circulation in and around psychology and the social sciences.
Perhaps in trying to be inclusive, however, and notwithstanding the
acknowledged diversity of their own positions, they have inadvertently
become prescriptive by omitting from their analysis attention to the
specificity of their own framework for discourse analysis. My comments
here are thus intended to ward off a potentially restrictive reading of the
valuable points they have made that could work to close off forms of
analysis that I would want to admit as relevant contenders for discourse
work. Hence while Antaki et al. refer themselves primarily (though they
make clear they do not intend this to be exclusionary) to forms of
discourse analysis focusing on written text, (more specifically connected
talk, and even more specifically transcription of interviews), their
account could give the impression that there are actually prescribed
features to (in their terms) be 'spotted'.
Moreover the model of discourse analysis they presume treats this as a
form of reflection rather than action, in a way that potentially restricts
the space of analysis to that of academic production of text rather than
to other practices of socially-oriented accountability. Here I am thinking
of the 'practical deconstruction' (cf. Parker et al., 1995) style of
discourse analysis that occurs within mental health and other forms of
political activism concerned with contesting the definitions and practices
of contemporary social policies, as well as feminist work, such as that of
Burns' (Burns, 2001) mentioned earlier.
Not only, then, does 'doing discourse analysis mean doing analysis', but
discourse analysis means analysing discourse. One has to have a theory
of discourse (or text or transcript) as well as of analysis to do discourse
analysis - and this also includes having an analysis of the technologies
of one's own analysis.