WEBVTT 00:00:00.840 --> 00:00:05.430 Discourse analysis or narrative analysis is a kind of qualitative research 00:00:05.430 --> 00:00:09.670 where we analyze text or some other human communication. 00:00:09.670 --> 00:00:12.410 Discourse is basically any kind of communication. 00:00:12.410 --> 00:00:17.530 And narrative is basically like a description of events or a story. 00:00:17.530 --> 00:00:23.710 How does this approach differ from grounded theory or multiple case study? 00:00:23.710 --> 00:00:28.270 Let's take this grounded theory and multiple case studies as a starting point. 00:00:28.270 --> 00:00:30.870 So these are our two templates that researchers 00:00:30.870 --> 00:00:35.880 like to follow and they're basically, sets of procedures starting from sampling 00:00:35.880 --> 00:00:39.100 to how you do interviews, to how you do analysis, 00:00:39.100 --> 00:00:41.490 to how you present their study results. 00:00:41.490 --> 00:00:46.380 So these are kinda like recipes that you can follow to do your research. 00:00:46.380 --> 00:00:49.380 But these are not the only kinds of qualitative research 00:00:49.380 --> 00:00:53.080 or ways of doing qualitative research that we apply 00:00:53.080 --> 00:00:55.180 in management research. 00:00:55.180 --> 00:00:57.620 There are also other ways. 00:00:57.620 --> 00:01:00.820 And this book chapter by Langley and Abdallah, 00:01:00.820 --> 00:01:04.040 explain that there are two other approaches, 00:01:04.040 --> 00:01:06.870 strategy as practices and strategy as discourse. 00:01:06.870 --> 00:01:10.320 These are not the same kinda recipes for doing research 00:01:10.320 --> 00:01:13.840 as those presented on the previous slide 00:01:13.840 --> 00:01:18.840 but they are more about what we analyze and what we study. 00:01:18.950 --> 00:01:22.940 So the strategy as a practice focuses on studying 00:01:22.940 --> 00:01:26.020 what people actually do when they do strategy. 00:01:26.020 --> 00:01:28.810 So instead of focusing on strategy as something 00:01:28.810 --> 00:01:32.009 that exists in the firm, or something that the firm has 00:01:32.009 --> 00:01:36.910 these approach uses strategy as something that people do. 00:01:36.910 --> 00:01:43.800 The strategy as a discourse idea is that strategy is a way of communication 00:01:43.800 --> 00:01:46.470 and we analyze that communication. 00:01:46.470 --> 00:01:51.510 So the idea of communication is that when we communicate something, 00:01:51.510 --> 00:01:54.760 that communication creates meaning for people. 00:01:54.760 --> 00:01:58.610 And that communication shapes the actions of people. 00:01:58.610 --> 00:02:02.400 So in contrast, through grounded theory 00:02:02.400 --> 00:02:06.900 or multiple case studies, which either study reality 00:02:06.900 --> 00:02:12.660 or people's perception of reality through texts and through explanations, 00:02:12.660 --> 00:02:16.270 in discourse analysis we study the explanation 00:02:16.270 --> 00:02:18.290 or the communication itself. 00:02:18.290 --> 00:02:22.950 So if we interview a person or if we analyze the document, 00:02:22.950 --> 00:02:26.280 we don't analyze the document to learn about 00:02:26.280 --> 00:02:28.810 what the document tells us about the reality 00:02:28.810 --> 00:02:33.760 or what the document tells us about the person's interpretation of reality. 00:02:33.760 --> 00:02:39.210 We analyze a document or we analyze a story based on what the story does. 00:02:39.210 --> 00:02:44.200 So for example, if we ask people to explain 00:02:44.200 --> 00:02:49.386 why a company failed, those narratives of failure 00:02:49.590 --> 00:02:52.870 could have been constructed by those people 00:02:52.870 --> 00:02:55.950 to rationalize the reasons for failure. 00:02:55.950 --> 00:02:59.910 So, for example, a person might construct a narrative 00:02:59.910 --> 00:03:02.980 that the failure was external to the company 00:03:02.980 --> 00:03:07.480 and that about voids the person feeling responsible 00:03:07.480 --> 00:03:10.240 for the failure themselves. 00:03:10.240 --> 00:03:13.830 So the focus here is not on understanding 00:03:13.830 --> 00:03:17.880 what the text tells about reality or what the text tells 00:03:17.880 --> 00:03:22.880 about a person's interpretation of reality but what the text does. 00:03:22.880 --> 00:03:27.700 So, for example or quite commonly an example 00:03:27.700 --> 00:03:30.570 in discourse analysis is political speech. 00:03:30.570 --> 00:03:37.320 So the purpose of political speech is not to tell about reality in as much 00:03:37.320 --> 00:03:40.620 it's about shaping public opinion. 00:03:40.620 --> 00:03:47.660 And we can only understand the text within the context in which it is spoken. 00:03:47.660 --> 00:03:51.650 So discourse refers to all forms of communication, 00:03:51.650 --> 00:03:56.320 written, spoken, could be images, any communication 00:03:56.320 --> 00:03:57.980 that people produce. 00:03:57.980 --> 00:04:00.540 And the idea is that discourse shapes the world. 00:04:00.540 --> 00:04:05.100 Symbols, texts and other things give meaning to us 00:04:05.100 --> 00:04:08.150 and shape our perceptions and these perceptions 00:04:08.150 --> 00:04:10.890 are with discourse analysis studies. 00:04:10.890 --> 00:04:17.420 For example strategy, if it's a document it helps people to make the structure 00:04:17.420 --> 00:04:20.630 of the world around them and it helps the organization, 00:04:20.630 --> 00:04:22.490 the people within the organization 00:04:22.490 --> 00:04:26.780 to coordinate their actions toward a common purpose. 00:04:26.780 --> 00:04:32.700 So, I like this description of discourse analysis by Saunders book. 00:04:32.700 --> 00:04:39.080 And she explains that discourse analysis 00:04:39.080 --> 00:04:41.980 is a general term that covers many different approaches 00:04:41.980 --> 00:04:43.710 of making sense of text. 00:04:43.710 --> 00:04:47.690 So there is no one set of analysis techniques and tools 00:04:47.690 --> 00:04:49.600 that form discourse analysis 00:04:49.600 --> 00:04:52.340 but there are multiple different techniques. 00:04:52.340 --> 00:04:55.140 And management research say there are not really 00:04:55.140 --> 00:04:59.640 that many templates that you can follow to do discourse analysis. 00:04:59.640 --> 00:05:03.210 But in linguistics where this approach originates, 00:05:03.210 --> 00:05:05.370 there are a few structured approach. 00:05:05.370 --> 00:05:07.860 But they're not very commonly used in management research 00:05:07.860 --> 00:05:09.780 so I will not talk about those. 00:05:09.780 --> 00:05:15.720 Another thing that this book explains is the critical discourse analysis. 00:05:15.720 --> 00:05:18.410 This is one variant of discourse analysis 00:05:18.410 --> 00:05:22.890 and the idea of critical discourse analysis, or critical studies more generally 00:05:22.890 --> 00:05:28.810 is to analyze the discourse to point some problems 00:05:28.810 --> 00:05:30.480 in the current discourse. 00:05:30.480 --> 00:05:35.190 For example, if we have movies, 00:05:35.190 --> 00:05:40.810 where our police are always white people and the bad guys are always black people. 00:05:40.810 --> 00:05:43.320 That's a pretty racist discourse. 00:05:43.320 --> 00:05:48.160 And if we point out that that actually emphasizes 00:05:48.160 --> 00:05:53.050 the racial stereotypes and increases the racism in society 00:05:53.050 --> 00:05:59.140 then our study would be a critical discourse analysis study. 00:05:59.140 --> 00:06:03.000 So the idea in a critical study is that you analyze the discourse 00:06:03.000 --> 00:06:07.830 and you point out some unwanted consequences 00:06:07.830 --> 00:06:10.830 of the current discourse or some problems with the current discourse 00:06:10.830 --> 00:06:14.527 and then you try to change the society through that way. 00:06:14.527 --> 00:06:18.000 The discourse analysis always considers text 00:06:18.000 --> 00:06:20.240 and text it's a part of a broader discourse. 00:06:20.240 --> 00:06:24.370 So text, we have of speech, we have figures, 00:06:24.370 --> 00:06:28.000 so quite often text is just a part of the discourse. 00:06:28.000 --> 00:06:31.280 And discourse always needs to be understood 00:06:31.280 --> 00:06:33.170 within the social context. 00:06:33.170 --> 00:06:35.740 So the meaning of language changes over time 00:06:35.740 --> 00:06:39.623 and the meaning of certain words changes depending on the context. 00:06:39.623 --> 00:06:43.690 So we cannot understand texts without understanding 00:06:43.690 --> 00:06:47.250 the context in which they were produced in. 00:06:47.250 --> 00:06:50.960 A typical example of, that we commonly use 00:06:50.960 --> 00:06:53.300 when teaching discourse analysis in social science 00:06:53.300 --> 00:06:56.190 more generally, is the interpretation of Bible. 00:06:56.190 --> 00:06:59.380 And the interpretation of Bible can only be done 00:06:59.380 --> 00:07:05.807 by understanding the context in which those texts were written 100s of years ago. 00:07:06.850 --> 00:07:10.703 Let's take a look at examples of what the discourse analyst might ask. 00:07:10.703 --> 00:07:13.870 So a discourse analyst might ask, 00:07:13.870 --> 00:07:16.490 what are the dominant discourses in the context? 00:07:16.490 --> 00:07:19.240 For example, if we study company failure, 00:07:19.240 --> 00:07:23.250 what are the ways that people explain the failure. 00:07:23.250 --> 00:07:26.330 There might be some dominant narratives that emerge. 00:07:26.330 --> 00:07:29.770 For example, one group of people could explain 00:07:29.770 --> 00:07:35.070 that the failure of a company was because of external situation circumstances. 00:07:35.070 --> 00:07:38.730 And another group of people could say that the failure was 00:07:38.730 --> 00:07:42.270 because of the management failure to act. 00:07:42.270 --> 00:07:44.840 Another group of people could say that the failure 00:07:44.840 --> 00:07:49.460 was just pure luck and or poor luck. 00:07:49.460 --> 00:07:53.220 We also need to understand, what is the purpose that each discourse serves. 00:07:53.220 --> 00:07:58.050 If you are a line worker, and you attribute to failure 00:07:58.050 --> 00:08:01.700 to the management of the company then the purpose of that discourse 00:08:01.700 --> 00:08:04.050 is to shift the blame away from you. 00:08:04.050 --> 00:08:07.360 So it's not you who are to blame it's the top management. 00:08:07.360 --> 00:08:11.470 The top management could also have the narrative 00:08:11.470 --> 00:08:14.570 that the failure was due to external causes 00:08:14.570 --> 00:08:17.320 and that shifts the blame away from them. 00:08:17.320 --> 00:08:20.980 We also need to understand for each text fragment, 00:08:20.980 --> 00:08:23.600 who is saying, what are they saying, when are they saying, 00:08:23.600 --> 00:08:27.270 where are they saying, why are they say something and how. 00:08:27.270 --> 00:08:31.360 To understand these questions consider this text fragment. 00:08:31.360 --> 00:08:33.930 'What's up', what's the meaning of 'what's up'? 00:08:33.930 --> 00:08:35.900 It depends on the context. 00:08:35.900 --> 00:08:40.690 It could be that you're meeting somebody and you're asking 00:08:40.690 --> 00:08:43.900 how are they doing, so that's kinda like a greeting. 00:08:43.900 --> 00:08:48.290 Or it could be understood as a question about the direction. 00:08:48.290 --> 00:08:51.450 And whether it's a question about the direction 00:08:51.450 --> 00:08:54.540 or what is the meaning of the term up 00:08:54.540 --> 00:08:57.110 or whether it's a greeting depends entirely on 00:08:57.110 --> 00:09:00.083 in which context these two words are spoken. 00:09:01.170 --> 00:09:06.130 Narrative analysis is sometimes combined with grounded theory. 00:09:06.130 --> 00:09:10.760 And there's a good article by Fairhurst and Putnam on how to actually do this. 00:09:10.760 --> 00:09:13.620 So because discourse analysis and narrative analysis 00:09:13.620 --> 00:09:18.380 don't really provide a template that people could follow, 00:09:18.380 --> 00:09:23.610 this is quite often combined with the grounded theory kind of coding. 00:09:23.610 --> 00:09:29.040 And there actually are similarities but there are also some differences 00:09:29.040 --> 00:09:31.210 between these two approaches. 00:09:31.210 --> 00:09:33.400 The most important difference is that, where is in grounded theory, 00:09:33.400 --> 00:09:41.590 the language or text or interview that we are analyzing is used to make sense 00:09:41.590 --> 00:09:44.870 of a person's interpretations of reality. 00:09:44.870 --> 00:09:48.110 Or if we have the realist approach, we use those texts and 00:09:48.110 --> 00:09:52.940 interviews to make sense of the reality itself. 00:09:52.940 --> 00:09:56.830 Here in discourse analysis, we are more focused on 00:09:56.830 --> 00:10:00.530 why are people communicating the way they are 00:10:00.530 --> 00:10:03.090 and what is the communication doing. 00:10:03.090 --> 00:10:06.450 So instead of looking at a text as data 00:10:06.450 --> 00:10:09.650 we look at the text as the subject of our study. 00:10:09.650 --> 00:10:11.630 And that's the key point in narrative and discourse analysis.