I had a minor set-to last week with the discourse analysis section of my consumer interviews, which has knock affects on the overall final structure of the thesis. Being so near the to the end, at the time this felt somewhat of a minor disaster, and sent my bonce in a right old spin.
There are many styles of discourse analysis, all slightly different in nature and therefore consequence and, some favoured more by certain disciplines than others. My research is what is known as “interdisciplinary” and I have been feeling a little tugg of love between humanities and social sciences lately, perhaps confounded by the fact that I have 2 supervisors who’s areas of experience and expertise have a humanities/soc-sci split. This has actually worked really well for me up until now, but last week during a meeting, it became apparent that there was an atmosphere of concern over the way I have analysed the interview data. Obviously it is good to know these things now before submission and viva, and that it what supervisors are for. However it is an unpleasant feeling when the output of nearly 3 years toil is called into question.

Two pieces of advice that I’ve constantly echoing in my head (which actually come from the Gaunlett article I mentioned in a previous post) are

Don’t let the PhD over run 3 years, get it finished.
Stop reading, start writing.

So consequently I’ve been all 6s & 7s this past week because, I ‘ve been in the library doing desk work on theories of my method and have lost writing time, because I am reading. However in the words of Tammy Wynette I am going stand by my method. A little known fact is that Tammy originally wrote her famous hit about the insecurities she had over an emerging field of data analysis she was developing. At the very last minute she changed the lyrics from method to man, to avoid alienating fans without a university education.

Back to me. I went away after meeting the supers, with a sense of impending doom that I was going to have to review all my data and produce a corpus and would bankcrupt myself doing the PhD forever. I spent a day looking through all these hideous methodology papers on sociolinguistics, speech act theory, and pragmatics looking for clues. There were tables and graphs and metrics and grids and diagrams and, and, YER- UCK! You have to understand that it you cut a slice off one of my limbs, that it would say “qualitative” in sugary pink writing like a piece of Brighton rock. I am qualitative in the way Cathy was Heathcliff. I loathe numbers. I can’t even remember my mums phone no, which she has had for 15 years. Then I came across some comforting words on Foucault from the lovely squishy cultural theorist par excellence, Stuart Hall, that made me feel all warm and fuzzy.

“The first point to note is the shift of attention in Foucault from language to discourse. He studied not language, but discourse as a system of representation”.

That’s what I’m talking about, discourse as a system of representation. Language and practice – language and practice. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Discourse is something we do. No piece of software, or visualising metrics, table thingie is ever going to provide insight into the ideological biases and power relations explicit in discursive formation as far as I’m concerned. What good would a graph do in offering perception of socio-cultural context? Numbers Pah! It’s back to my first love of social –semiotics for me. I’ll be applying Saussure & Barthes on the ones and twos. Words as signs; iconic, symbolic, indexical. It’s denotation and connotation all the way. Yes sireeeee.

In the interests of balanced debate, here is an article from my friend Shirl biggin up graphs. Shout out to the graph collective. RRrrrspect.