Assignment 48 for practical work in media lab: Discourse Analysis as a Qualitative Approach For the Departments of Media Studies by Prof Dr Sohail Ansari
Sunnahs
of Eating
يَا غُلَامُ سَمِّ اللَّهَ، وَكُلْ بِيَمِينِكَ، وَكُلْ مِمَّا يَلِيكَ
‘Oh boy! Mention the Name of Allah and eat
with your right hand, and eat of the dish what is nearer to you.”
Since then I have applied those instructions when eating.”
Sahih Al-Bukhari and Muslim
Eat on the floor
It is narrated that the Prophet ﷺ said:
“I eat just as the slave eats, and I sit just as the slave sits”.
Abu Ya’la (Sahih)
Eat with three fingers
Ka’b Ibn Malik states:
“The Prophet ﷺ used to eat with three fingers and lick his hand before he
wiped it.”
Sahih Muslim
Eat together
Abdullah Ibn Umar Narrated:
“I heard my father say: ‘I heard ‘Umar bin Khattab say: “The
Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) said: ‘Eat together and do not eat separately, for the
blessing is in being together.’”
Sunan Ibn Majah (Hassan)
Don’t overeat
The Messenger of Allah ﷺ said:
‘The human does not fill any container that is worse than his
stomach. It is sufficient for the son of Adam to eat what will support his
back. If this is not possible, then a third for food, a third for drink, and
third for his breath.”
Al-Tirmidhi (Sahih)
Don’t criticise food
Abu Huraira narrates that:
“The Prophet ﷺ did not criticise any food ever. If he desired the food, he
would eat it and if he disliked it, he would leave it.”
Sahih Al-Bukhari and Muslim
Compliment tasty food
Jabir reported:
The Prophet ﷺ asked for sauce and was told that there was nothing except
vinegar. He asked for it and began to eat from it saying, “How excellent is
vinegar when eaten as a condiment! How excellent is vinegar when eaten as a
condiment!
Sahih Muslim
Don’t discard any food.
From the Hadith of Jabir:
I heard Allah’s Apostle ﷺ as saying: The Satan is present with any one of you in
everything he does; he is present even when he eats food; so if any one of you
drops a mouthful he should remove away anything filthy on it and eat it and not
leave for the devil; and when he finishes (food) he should lick his fingers,
for he does not know in what portion of his food the blessing lies.
Sahih Muslim
Lick your fingers
Jabir Bin Abdullah narrates that the Prophet ﷺ said:
“He should not wipe his hand with a tissue until he licks his
fingers, for he does not know in which part of his food is the blessing”.
Sahih Muslim
Wipe the dish
Anas Ibn Malik narrates:
“(The Prophet) commanded us to wipe our plates”.
Sahih Muslim
Praise Allah after eating
Anas Bin Malik narrates that the Prophet ﷺ said:
“Allah is pleased with a servant if he eats his food, he praises
Allah for it; or if he drinks his drink he praises Allah for it”.Muslim
Discourse Analysis as a
Qualitative Approach to Study
Information Sharing Practice in Malaysian Board Forums
Alice Shanthi, Lee Kean Wah, Denis Lajium (Dr)
Faculty of Psychology and Education,
Universiti Malaysia Sabah, Sabah, Malaysia
alice_shanthi@yahoo.com.my
Information Sharing Practice in Malaysian Board Forums
Alice Shanthi, Lee Kean Wah, Denis Lajium (Dr)
Faculty of Psychology and Education,
Universiti Malaysia Sabah, Sabah, Malaysia
alice_shanthi@yahoo.com.my
QUALITATIVE METHODS FOR DATA ANALYSIS
Constructivism or interpretivism paradigms are normally associated with studies that adopt a qualitative approach, where the emphasis is placed on studying social issues that evolves around the lives of people. It involves “studying things in their natural setting, attempts to make sense of, or interpret, phenomena in terms of the meanings people bring to them” (Denzin & Lincoln, 2013:7). It is also about collecting data using several common methods associated with qualitative research such as participant/s observation/s, field notes, recordings, interviews, photographs and memos. In qualitative method the data collected to examine a social phenomenon could be in the form of spoken transcripts, written text and/or other forms of documents that are analysed in an attempt to understand human behaviour and experience in a social setting. Thus, in a
qualitative study, “researchers are keen on gaining understanding of people’s behavior and/or experience in a rich and complex setting that specifc for the particular group of people or setting that is being studied, and not in obtaining information which can be generalized to other larger groups” (Saunders, Lewis & Thornhill. 2009:127).
Wertz, et. al., (2011) distinguishes five ways of doing qualitative analysis in
social science, namely; phenomenology, grounded theory, discourse analysis, narrative research and intuitive inquiry. Of these five methods they go on to explain that discourse analysis belongs to “a family of contemporary approaches that emphasises human language as a socially contextual performance” (Wertz, et. al, 2011: 4). Since discourse analysis is categorised as one of the contemporary approaches in the feld of qualitative research, it shares some of the same analytical methods with other more established qualitative methods such as grounded theory. These include steps such as coding, sorting of categories, identifying themes, and relationships and drawing conclusions to answer
the research questions. In fact literature reveal that it has been noted that most of the qualitative methods share some form of commonalities in their analytical approaches (Starks & Trinidad, 2007; Saunders, Lewis, & Thornhill, 2009; Wertz, et al., 2011).
However what differentiates them is their choice of philosophy or paradigm, goals and the final product of their investigation. As mentioned by Stark and Trinidad (2007) greater differences between these qualitative methods are observed at the beginning and the final results of the study as seen in Table 1 which shows a comparison between Discourse Analysis (DA) and Grounded Theory (GT) methods which share a lot of commonalities.
Table 1 Similarities and Differences of the Two Interpretive Approaches With Respect To History, Goal,Philosophy, Methodology, Analytic Method and Product.
Constructivism or interpretivism paradigms are normally associated with studies that adopt a qualitative approach, where the emphasis is placed on studying social issues that evolves around the lives of people. It involves “studying things in their natural setting, attempts to make sense of, or interpret, phenomena in terms of the meanings people bring to them” (Denzin & Lincoln, 2013:7). It is also about collecting data using several common methods associated with qualitative research such as participant/s observation/s, field notes, recordings, interviews, photographs and memos. In qualitative method the data collected to examine a social phenomenon could be in the form of spoken transcripts, written text and/or other forms of documents that are analysed in an attempt to understand human behaviour and experience in a social setting. Thus, in a
qualitative study, “researchers are keen on gaining understanding of people’s behavior and/or experience in a rich and complex setting that specifc for the particular group of people or setting that is being studied, and not in obtaining information which can be generalized to other larger groups” (Saunders, Lewis & Thornhill. 2009:127).
Wertz, et. al., (2011) distinguishes five ways of doing qualitative analysis in
social science, namely; phenomenology, grounded theory, discourse analysis, narrative research and intuitive inquiry. Of these five methods they go on to explain that discourse analysis belongs to “a family of contemporary approaches that emphasises human language as a socially contextual performance” (Wertz, et. al, 2011: 4). Since discourse analysis is categorised as one of the contemporary approaches in the feld of qualitative research, it shares some of the same analytical methods with other more established qualitative methods such as grounded theory. These include steps such as coding, sorting of categories, identifying themes, and relationships and drawing conclusions to answer
the research questions. In fact literature reveal that it has been noted that most of the qualitative methods share some form of commonalities in their analytical approaches (Starks & Trinidad, 2007; Saunders, Lewis, & Thornhill, 2009; Wertz, et al., 2011).
However what differentiates them is their choice of philosophy or paradigm, goals and the final product of their investigation. As mentioned by Stark and Trinidad (2007) greater differences between these qualitative methods are observed at the beginning and the final results of the study as seen in Table 1 which shows a comparison between Discourse Analysis (DA) and Grounded Theory (GT) methods which share a lot of commonalities.
Table 1 Similarities and Differences of the Two Interpretive Approaches With Respect To History, Goal,Philosophy, Methodology, Analytic Method and Product.
|
Discourse Analysis
|
Grounded Theory
|
|
|
History
|
Linguistics/semiotics
|
Sociology
|
|
Philosophy
|
Knowledge and meaning is
produced through interaction with multiple discourses |
Theory is discovered
by examining concepts grounded in the data |
|
Goal
|
Understand how people use
language to create and enact identities and activities. |
Develop an explanatory
theory of basic social processes |
Discourse Analysis as a Qualitative Approach to Study Information Sharing Practise in Malaysian Board Forums 162 International Journal on E-Learning Practices (IJELP) Volume 2, 2015 (Penerbit UMS 2015)
|
Methodology
• Formulating a research question |
“What discourses are used and
how do they shape identities, activities and relationships?” |
“How does the basic social
process of [ X ] happen in the context of [ Y ] |
|
• Sampling
|
Those situated in one or more of
the discourses of interest. |
Those who have
experienced the phenomenon under different condition. |
|
• Data Collection: -Observation
|
Observe participants in
conversation in their natural environment. |
Observe participants where
the basic social process takes place. |
|
-Interview
|
Both engage in dialogue;
interviewer probes for intertextual meaning |
Participants describe
experience; interviewer probes for detail, clarity |
|
Analytic Methods
|
Examine how understanding is
produced through a close look at the words. Interested in how the story was told, what identities, activities, relationships, and shared meaning are created through language. |
Open, axial, and selective
coding: examine concepts across their properties and dimensions; develop an explanatory framework that integrates the concepts into a core category |
|
Audience
|
Policy makers & interventionist
who need to understand the discourses in use to craft affective messages. |
Researchers & practitioners
who seek explanatory models upon which to design interventions. |
|
Product
|
Description of language-in-use;
identify how different discourses shape how identities , relationship, and social goods are negotiated and produced. |
Generate theory from the
range of the participants’ experience. |
Source: Starks and Trinidad (2007)
BACKGROUND
ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
Language helps us to understand each other when we communicate. Language by
itself is meaningless; “in human communication it is through the shared, mutually agreed-on use of language that meaning is created” (Starks &Trinidad, 2007:1374).
Communication that takes place in different context and genre is called discourse.
According to Androutsopoulos (2011:47), discourse is defned as language-in-use or spoken language that comes about from communication that takes place naturally in social context. Underlying the word ‘discourse ‘is the general idea that language is structured according to different patterns that people’s utterances follow when they take part in different domains of social life, familiar examples being ‘sociological discourse’, ‘medical discourse’, ‘computer-mediated discourse’, ‘political discourse’ etc.Alice Shanthi, Lee Kean Wah & Denis Lajium International Journal on E-Learning Practices (IJELP) Volume 2, 2015 (Penerbit UMS 2015) 163
Language helps us to understand each other when we communicate. Language by
itself is meaningless; “in human communication it is through the shared, mutually agreed-on use of language that meaning is created” (Starks &Trinidad, 2007:1374).
Communication that takes place in different context and genre is called discourse.
According to Androutsopoulos (2011:47), discourse is defned as language-in-use or spoken language that comes about from communication that takes place naturally in social context. Underlying the word ‘discourse ‘is the general idea that language is structured according to different patterns that people’s utterances follow when they take part in different domains of social life, familiar examples being ‘sociological discourse’, ‘medical discourse’, ‘computer-mediated discourse’, ‘political discourse’ etc.Alice Shanthi, Lee Kean Wah & Denis Lajium International Journal on E-Learning Practices (IJELP) Volume 2, 2015 (Penerbit UMS 2015) 163
The analysis of these
patterns in language is termed as ‘Discourse analysis’
(Jorgensen & Phillips, 2002). Therefore it can be concluded that the study of naturally occurring language in any social context is discourse analysis (DA), and it makes use of various qualitative methods to increase our understanding of human experience, and according to Gale (2010), discourse analysis as method to study language-in-use has had a major impact on social sciences over the years. Hence it can be said that discourse analysis is a broad term used to analyse written and spoken text of people’s discourse (text and talk) in everyday social context.
(Jorgensen & Phillips, 2002). Therefore it can be concluded that the study of naturally occurring language in any social context is discourse analysis (DA), and it makes use of various qualitative methods to increase our understanding of human experience, and according to Gale (2010), discourse analysis as method to study language-in-use has had a major impact on social sciences over the years. Hence it can be said that discourse analysis is a broad term used to analyse written and spoken text of people’s discourse (text and talk) in everyday social context.
Another fundamental
representation of discourse analysis is that “language
must be seen as action” (Wood & Kruger, 2000: 5). This notion arises from the famous Oxford philosopher J.L.Austin. In his famous lecture entitled “How to Do Things with Words”, Austin (1962) showed that many utterances do not simply describe a state of affairs but perform an action (Silverman, 1999:120). Therefore whether in the text or talk form, words set forth to perform actions and those actions have meaning attached to it according to the intentions of the speaker/sender and how the reader/listener interprets and acts accordingly.
must be seen as action” (Wood & Kruger, 2000: 5). This notion arises from the famous Oxford philosopher J.L.Austin. In his famous lecture entitled “How to Do Things with Words”, Austin (1962) showed that many utterances do not simply describe a state of affairs but perform an action (Silverman, 1999:120). Therefore whether in the text or talk form, words set forth to perform actions and those actions have meaning attached to it according to the intentions of the speaker/sender and how the reader/listener interprets and acts accordingly.
Exercise
Elaborate with example J.L.Austin’s lecture entitled “How to Do Things with
Words”.
Since discourse analysis
seeks to analyse the activities present in
talk(words spoken or written), it cannot be seen as having a single rigid form of meaning, but as differing according contexts, genre and to the meaning created by its users.
Hence, depending on the context and the different types of genre under scrutiny,
discourse is found in a broad range of approaches to study human experience. This has paved the way for different variants of discourse analysis based on the language variant used by different people in different settings. For example, there is Conversation Analysis (CA) where the focus is on a very technical analysis of talk-in-interaction, and “the analysis is almost always used to analyse language found on audio (radio) or visual (television) recordings of interaction, that is painstakingly transcribed” (Have, 2006), making Conversation analysis a prevailing method to study spoken in media.
talk(words spoken or written), it cannot be seen as having a single rigid form of meaning, but as differing according contexts, genre and to the meaning created by its users.
Hence, depending on the context and the different types of genre under scrutiny,
discourse is found in a broad range of approaches to study human experience. This has paved the way for different variants of discourse analysis based on the language variant used by different people in different settings. For example, there is Conversation Analysis (CA) where the focus is on a very technical analysis of talk-in-interaction, and “the analysis is almost always used to analyse language found on audio (radio) or visual (television) recordings of interaction, that is painstakingly transcribed” (Have, 2006), making Conversation analysis a prevailing method to study spoken in media.
Next variant of discourse
analysis is Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), according to (Wodak, 2008), this
field’s foremost practitioner, “CDA [is] fundamentally interested in analyzing opaque
as well as transparent structural relationships of dominance, discrimination, power
and control when these are manifested in language. Another is grammatical analysis
(GA), where the researcher will study a set of single sentences illustrating a
particular feature of the language (lexical and grammatical items). However the focus of this study lies with computer mediated communication (CMC). According to Thurlow, Lengel, and Tomic (2004), “the history of computer-mediated communication (CMC) is more than fifty years old and, has become very attractive to scholarly attention (since the mid-1990s) because of the fast-growing popularity and ubiquity of personal computers”.
Computer mediated communication (CMC) and the study of language used in
CMC for communicative purpose is pointed out as computer-mediated discourse (CMD).
Fitzpatrick and Donnelly’s (2010) defne CMD, as chiefly text-based human to human communication in a mediated environment using computers or mobile telephony in public spheres, which encompasses human communication via email, discussion boards, blogs and wikis. Further computer-mediated discourse (CMD), according to Herring (2004) refers to naturally occurring written language in human-to-human communication via computer networks.
Discourse Analysis as a Qualitative Approach to Study Information Sharing Practise in Malaysian Board Forums 164 International Journal on E-Learning Practices (IJELP) Volume 2, 2015 (Penerbit UMS 2015)
Discourse Analysis as Qualitative Analytical Method
particular feature of the language (lexical and grammatical items). However the focus of this study lies with computer mediated communication (CMC). According to Thurlow, Lengel, and Tomic (2004), “the history of computer-mediated communication (CMC) is more than fifty years old and, has become very attractive to scholarly attention (since the mid-1990s) because of the fast-growing popularity and ubiquity of personal computers”.
Computer mediated communication (CMC) and the study of language used in
CMC for communicative purpose is pointed out as computer-mediated discourse (CMD).
Fitzpatrick and Donnelly’s (2010) defne CMD, as chiefly text-based human to human communication in a mediated environment using computers or mobile telephony in public spheres, which encompasses human communication via email, discussion boards, blogs and wikis. Further computer-mediated discourse (CMD), according to Herring (2004) refers to naturally occurring written language in human-to-human communication via computer networks.
Discourse Analysis as a Qualitative Approach to Study Information Sharing Practise in Malaysian Board Forums 164 International Journal on E-Learning Practices (IJELP) Volume 2, 2015 (Penerbit UMS 2015)
Discourse Analysis as Qualitative Analytical Method
Grounded theory Table 2 Five domains of CMDA
analysis
|
Domain
|
Phenomena
|
Issues
|
Methods
|
|
Structure
|
discourse schemata
|
genre characteristics
|
structural analysis
|
|
Meaning
|
meaning of words,
utterances |
what the speaker
intends, what is accomplished through language |
pragmatics, semantics
|
|
Interaction
|
turns, sequences,
exchanges, threads etc. |
interactivity, topic
development |
conversation analysis
|
|
Social
Behaviour |
face-management,
discourse styles |
contextual influence
|
interactional
sociolinguistics |
|
Participation
|
Number of messages,
responses, thread length, |
Engagement, roles
|
descriptive statistics
|
Exercise
Why discourse analysis cannot be used as quantitative
method
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