Discourse Analysis I: Interviews, Narratives, & Speeches
Discourse analysis is the study of language in context and in action. Through discourse analysis (DA) researchers study what people do with language to accomplish social and communicative goals. While DA is used to study both spoken and written language, the focus in this introductory workshop will be on spoken language. Specifically, the workshop will provide scholars with a set of tools and approaches for analyzing long stretches of talk, such as from interviews, narratives, and/or speeches. These text types, or genres, are frequently analyzed using standard qualitative data analysis methods, where pieces of text are grouped into ever-more inclusive thematic categories. Instead, DA involves breaking text down into pieces, analyzing how these pieces work together, and what they accomplish for the speaker. We will learn to make interpretations of what speakers do and why, drawing on a number of DA theories and methods. Among the topics covered are: genre, intention and interpretation, discourse structure, intertextuality, frames, and discourse and ideology. This workshop is for scholars new to DA and will combine lecture and hands-on analytical exercises. Participants are encouraged to bring a text they would like to analyze in the course. Sample texts will be provided.
Presented by: Rosalyn Negrón
Rosalyn Negrón is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Massachusetts Boston. She is also an affiliated faculty in the Critical Ethnic & Community Studies and the Gender, Leadership, and Public Policy graduate programs at UMass Boston, where she teaches courses in transdisciplinary research and policy analysis. She brings extensive experience teaching research design and research methods courses at the undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral levels, with specialties in ethnographic and linguistic methods, problem-centered transdisciplinary, and mixed methods research. Prof. Negrón is co-founder and co-lead of the Transdisciplinary Dissertation Proposal Development Program at UMass Boston, where she trains doctoral students from a range of social science and interdisciplinary fields.
Date: Friday, November 12, 2021
Time: 9:00am - 4:00pm (breaks throughout)
Location: This workshop will take place over Zoom and will incorporate hands on exercises
Workshop Fee: $50