ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses: discourse analysis and critical discourse analysis; conversational analysis; narrative discourse; and autobiography, seen as significant alternatives to coding and content analysis, keeping together the text as a whole rather than fragmenting it as in coding. The chapter discusses discourse analysis and critical discourse analysis, how to perform them and what considerations have to be addressed (e.g. words are not neutral but carry many meanings and are open to multiple and multilevelled interpretations). The chapter takes an extended example of conversational analysis, and indicates how to analyse the conversation, how it can be interpreted at many levels (curricular, social and interpersonal learning, language rights and nature, speech act theory, theorization of power and the hidden curriculum), and problems that might exist in such interpretations. The chapter takes another extended worked example – a narrative account – and indicates the multi-perspectival and multilevelled interpretations that can be made of it, and problems that this poses for the researcher. Finally, the chapter includes a worked example of an autobiography and indicates the multiple analyses and interpretations that can be made from it, the challenges that this raises for the researcher and how to address them.
