Abstract
Numerous published books on the theories and methods of discourse analysis have focused on the linguistically oriented introduction of each discipline in discourse analysis (e.g. Gee, 2014; Jorgensen and Phillips, 2002). The book edited by Boréus and Bergström offers a new perspective to present the approaches of discourse analysis rooted in social sciences rather than linguistics. The depiction of the eight approaches in this book leaps out of the boundary set by differences between disciplines in discourse analysis and rearranges the approaches of discourse analysis from the perspective of the social sciences. In the process of analysing text or talk, scholars may concurrently adopt both quantitative and qualitative approaches. Readers of discourse analysis are often confused about the adopted approaches and whether they are applicable in other types of discourse. This book, therefore, illustrates eight approaches to analysing talk and text for readers who are not very familiar with different approaches and not able to choose a corresponding one for a target discourse in the process of analysis.
Apart from Chapters 1 (the introductory chapter) and 9 (the exercise chapter), the illustration of the approaches is from Chapters 2–8. Chapter 2, Content Analysis, is about comparisons based on quantifications of different elements in text and talk. Boréus and Bergström argue that content analysis focuses on the ideational and interpersonal aspects of discourse by either quantitative or qualitative content analysis.
Chapter 3, Argumentation Analysis, focuses on the structure of persuasion. Scholars are interested in what people are arguing for or against via both ideational and interpersonal perspectives. Boréus illustrates three methods of argumentation analysis: pragma dialectics, the pro et contra model and political discourse analysis. The function of argumentation analysis is to ‘structure the fairly large material consisting of state reports, legislative proposals, private bills, minutes from parliamentary debates, etc.’. (p. 86).
Chapter 4 focuses on the Qualitative Analysis of Ideas and Ideological Content with the aim to identify the intentional action of discourse. According to Lindberg, the action-guiding ideological content in discourse is always constructed by value statements, descriptive statements and prescriptive statements (i.e. the V-D-P triad), which form the kernel of ideological content.
In Chapter 5, Robertson depicts Narrative Analysis as a way of gaining insights into power and common-sense understandings of the laws of the world. She also exemplifies four modes of reading a narrative: the holistic-content mode, the holistic-form mode, the categorical-content mode and the categorical-form mode.
In Chapter 6, Metaphor Analysis and Critical Linguistics, Boréus and Bergström are primarily concerned with the uncovering of implicit ideological content in discourse. Metaphor analysis is conducted within cognitive linguistics, with the aim to reveal ‘how human thinking is related to linguistic expressions’ (p. 147), while critical linguistics emphasises grammar and the choice of words. Both approaches adopt ideational aspects as their central topic.
Chapter 7, Multimodal Discourse Analysis, addresses the analysis of visual resources and their ideational and interpersonal aspects based on Kress and van Leeuwen’s (2006) theory. Björkvall regards the approach as qualitative with a toolbox containing many analytical concepts and terms and the analysis is based on the interpretation of those concepts and terms.
The last approach, Discourse Analysis (Chapter 8), ‘offers an opportunity for a broader form of textual analysis that is based on a number of theoretical points of departure’ (p. 210). Bergström, Ekström and Boréus identify three traditions within discourse analysis: discourse theory, discursive psychology and critical discourse analysis.
This book contributes, first, to researchers and university students who analyse various kinds of discourse in doing research for their theses as a methodological basis because it is a concise and well-constructed manual with a list of complementary readings at the end of each chapter. For those who are not very familiar with textual analysis, the book can be regarded as a textbook of methods for further reading. Second, each chapter (except for the first and the last ones) illustrates the approach with a wide range of specific and concrete examples, providing the applications of concepts of the eight approaches, including how they overlap with each other. Third, the approaches presented in this book demonstrate the unique interpretation of discourse analysis compared to the common understanding of a particular discourse and the book discusses the validity and reliability of each approach to improve the universality of the analysis of text and talk. Finally, the book also introduces some useful software (e.g. Corpora, SPSS and MATLAB) to assist in the analysis process.
Despite its great strengths, the book has some limitations. Given that the approaches to analysing text and talk can partly overlap, it might be better if the book further illustrated situations in which different approaches cooperate with each other in detail with more examples and notes for its readers. In addition, it would be more comprehensive and integral to add another chapter to list the similarities and differences between approaches in this book, which would provide readers with an in-depth understanding of the analysis approaches and a review of the whole book.
Overall, this book is a highly useful introduction to the approaches and applications of text and discourse analysis in the social sciences. It fills a gap in the literature on the classification of methods of analysing text and talk for students and scholars alike. The book is an insightful resource for people who are interested in and perplexed by how to select appropriate approaches when analysing text and discourse.