Bussiness Research

Methods

 Wildan (0417243530)  Ira Tjahyaning Putri (041724353042)

 Agus Sutiyono (0417243530)  Ariska Banon Junior (0417243530)
 Thea (041724)  Nugraheni (0417243530)
Chapter 20:
Language in
Qualitative
research
 Language and social research

– Knowing how words are used and the meanings of specific

terms in the local vernacular (or `argot') is crucial to an
appreciation of how the social world being studied is viewed
by its members

– The two approaches examined here treat language as their

central focal point: conversation analysis (CA) and discourse
analysis (DA)
What is conversation analysis?

• Conversation analysis (CA) is the fine-grained analysis of talk as it occurs

in interaction in naturally occurring situations.
• The talk is usually recorded and transcribed so that the detailed analyses
can be carried out.
• These analyses are concerned with uncovering the underlying structures
of talk in interaction and as such with the achievement of order through
interaction.
Assumptions of CA

– Speech is seen as action that ‘does’ something

– Focus is on the ‘here-and-now’ context of talk
– avoid making extraneous inferences
– Heritage (1984, 1987)
– talk is structured by tacit rules
– talk is forged contextually
– analysis is grounded in data
– The specific details of conversational interaction cannot be ignored
Some basic tools of CA: 1

– Notational symbols
– We:ll - prolonged sound
– .hh - intake of breath
– (0.8) - silence for 0.8 seconds
– Turn-taking
– Adjacency pairs
– question and answer
– invitation and response
Some basic tools of CA: 2

– Preference organization
– one response preferred to the other (e.g. acceptance/refusal)
– dispreferred response has to be justified
– Accounts
– justifies action by reference to common values
– Repair mechanisms
– response to unexpected speech acts
– restores interaction to normal appearances
What is discourse analysis?

– All forms of linguistic communication

– Discourse is constitutive of the social world
– frames the way we perceive reality
– creates objects of knowledge

– Anti-realist epistemology
– Constructionist ontology
– What are people trying to accomplish when they use particular
discourses?
Three basic discourse-analytic questions
Four themes in discourse
analysis
 Discourse is a topic, not just a resource
 Language is constructive
 Discourse is a form of action
 Rhetorically organized
 Establishing one version of the world in the face of
competing versions
Gill (2000)
Uncovering interpretative repertoires

– General resources used to construct discourse and enable the

performance of certain acts (Potter & Wetherell, 1994)
– e.g. Gilbert and Mulkay’s (1984) found separate empiricist and
contingent repertoires of language used by scientists, depending
on whether they were presenting their work in scientific papers or
discussing it more informally with the researchers.
Producing facts

 Discourse analysts are interested in the ways that allegedly factual

knowledge is conveyed
 Potter et al (1991) studied the making of a television documentary
‘Cancer: Your money or your life’ (Channel 4, April 1988)
 They used the following methods:
 Looking for rhetorical detail
 Use of variation as a lever
 Reading the detail
 Looking for statements of credibility
 Cross-referencing discourse studies
Critical discourse analysis (CDA)

– CDA emphasizes the role of language as a power resource that is

related to ideology and socio-cultural change
– CDA tries to reveal the meaning of a phenomenon by asking:
– why something seems to mean something different now to what it meant 40
years ago; how one discourse influences another; how discourse is
constructed through academic or journal articles; how discourse makes
certain activities possible, desirable or inevitable;
– how some people use discourse to legitimate their positions and actions
Overview of Discourse Analysis

– More flexible than Conversation Analysis in looking beyond immediate

context of talk
– Growing in popularity
– Anti-realist position leads to a criticism of being too abstract
– The term itself – ‘discourse analysis’ – may be too broad to be
meaningful
– Overall, understanding how language is used may be crucial to
understanding the social world
 Chapter 22:
Qualitative data
analysis
Qualitative data analysis

– General strategies:
– analytic induction
– grounded theory

– Coding:
– steps
– considerations
– problems
Analytic induction

A rigorous search for universal explanation of phenomena:

1. Rough definition of research question
2. Hypothetical explanation
3. Data collection (examination of cases)
4. If any deviant cases found, redefine or reformulate hypothesis
5. Continue until all cases fit hypothesis
The process of analytic induction
 Grounded theory

– Theory is derived from the data, which are systematically gathered and analysed
– Iterative process
– repetitive interplay between data collection and analysis / theory building
– Developments in grounded theory
– Straussian model more prescriptive
– term used loosely by researchers today
– Distinction between tools and outcomes
Tools of grounded theory

– Theoretical sampling
– Coding
– begins during initial stages of research
– important first step in generating theory
– progressive
– Theoretical saturation
– Constant comparison (between concepts/indicators)
Outcomes of grounded theory

– Concepts (produced by open coding)

– Categories (higher level of abstraction)
– core categories
– Properties (attributes of a category)
– Hypotheses (initial hunches)
– Theory
– explanation of relationship between concepts
– substantive or formal theory
Processes and outcomes in grounded theory
Memos

– Notes written by researchers to themselves

– Help to generate concepts and categories
– reminder of what terms mean
– encourage reflective thinking about emerging ideas
– crystallize ideas and keep researcher on track
– e.g. bus industry study (Bryman et al, 1996)
– in vivo code: ‘inheritance’ of company traits and traditions from pre-
deregulation period
 Criticisms of grounded theory

– Researcher cannot suspend awareness of theories and concepts (Bulmer, 1979)

– Funding proposals require clear statement of aims, theories and research questions
– Time consuming
– Does not necessarily produce a theory - usually specific explanations of substantive
issues
– Confusing use of terms ‘concepts’ and ‘categories’
– Fragments data - loss of context and narrative flow (Coffey & Atkinson, 1996)
– Competing accounts of what is involved
Considerations in developing codes

– Of what general category is this item of data an instance?

– What does this item of data represent?
– What is this item of data about?
– Of what topic is this item of data an instance?
– What question about a topic does this item of data suggest?
– What sort of answer to a question about a topic does this item of data
imply?
– What is happening here?
– What are people doing?
– What do people say they are doing?
– What kind of event is going on?
 Steps and considerations in coding

1. Code as soon as possible

2. Read through your initial set of transcripts
3. Do it again !!
4. Review your codes
5. Consider more general theoretical ideas in relation to codes and data
6. Any one item or slice of data can and often should be coded in more than one way
7. Do not worry about generating what seem to be too many codes
8. Keep coding in perspective – it is not analysis
Turning data into fragments

– Cut and paste / code and retrieve

– not just a mechanical task of data management, coding
helps to generate ideas and build theory
Problems with coding

• Losing the context of what was said (extracting sections of data)

• Fragmentation of data - loss of narrative flow (Coffey & Atkinson, 1996)
• Narrative analysis as solution? (Riessman, 1993)
• Risk of only providing descriptive account of data rather than theorizing
Thematic analysis

– One of the most common approaches to qualitative data analysis

– Not an approach to analysis that has an identifiable heritage or that
has been outlined in terms of a distinctive cluster of techniques
– Framework: National Centre for Social Research in the UK
- ‘matrix-based method for ordering and synthesising data’ (Ritchie
et al, 2003)
Using Framework for Bryman’s Disney study
Narrative analysis

– Storied nature of human recounting of lives and events (contents

of data)
– elicited personal narratives (Mishler, 1986)
– life history / biographical approach
– Narrative account produced in the interview (form of data; the
sources themselves)
– narrative analysis of transcripts (Riessman, 1993)
– certain kinds of question tend to elicit a narrative
Secondary analysis of
qualitative data
Secondary analysis offers rich opportunities not least because the
tendency for qualitative researchers to generate large and
unwieldy sets of data means that much of the material remains
under-explored.
But, it may be hard to understand the original context and there may
be ethical issues concerning participant permissions.
Qualidata is an archival resource centre, established in 1994, and can
be a useful reference point.