Quantifying Approaches to Discourse for Social Scientists

330 Pages·2019·5.944 MB·English

by  Ronny Scholz

Postdisciplinary Studies in Discourse
Series Editor
Johannes Angermuller
Centre for Applied Linguistics
University of Warwick
Coventry, UK
Postdisciplinary Studies in Discourse engages in the exchange between
discourse theory and analysis while putting emphasis on the intellectual
challenges in discourse research. Moving beyond disciplinary divisions in
today’s social sciences, the contributions deal with critical issues at the
intersections between language and society. Edited by Johannes
Angermuller together with members of DiscourseNet, the series wel-
comes high-quality manuscripts in discourse research from all disciplin-
ary and geographical backgrounds. DiscourseNet is an international and
interdisciplinary network of researchers which is open to discourse ana-
lysts and theorists from all backgrounds. Editorial board: Cristina
Arancibia, Aurora Fragonara, Péter Furkó, Tian Hailong, Jens Maesse,
Eduardo Chávez Herrera, Michael Kranert, Jan Krasni, María Laura
Pardo, Yannik Porsché, Kaushalya Perera, Luciana Radut-Gaghi, Marco
Antonio Ruiz, Jan Zienkowski
More information about this series at
http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14534
Ronny Scholz
Editor
Quantifying
Approaches to
Discourse for Social
Scientists
Editor
Ronny Scholz
Centre for Applied Linguistics
University of Warwick
Coventry, UK
Postdisciplinary Studies in Discourse
ISBN 978-3-319-97369-2 ISBN 978-3-319-97370-8 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97370-8
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018958470
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019
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Acknowledgements
The idea for this volume was born during the First International
DiscourseNet Congress in Bremen in late summer 2015. Together with
Marcus Müller, Tony McEnery, and André Salem, we had organized the
panel ‘Quantifying methods in discourse studies. Possibilities and limits
for the analysis of discursive practices’. With scholars of international
renown coming from linguistics, statistics, computer sciences, sociology
and political sciences in countries such as Canada, France, Germany,
Switzerland and the United Kingdom as well as guests from many other
countries, the panel was a real success. Papers presented seminal work
using a great variety of quantifying methods mostly in combination with
qualitative methods.
This edited volume is driven by the interdisciplinary and international
attitude of the inspiring discussions that we led in the panel. Completing
such a fascinating project would not have been possible without a net-
work of international supporters, to name only a few of them: ERC
DISCONEX Group and the Professional and Academic Discourses
Group, both hosted in Applied Linguistics at the University of Warwick;
the Centre d’Étude des Discours, Images, Textes Écrits, Communication
(CEDITEC) at the University Paris Est-Créteil; DiscourseLab at the TU
Darmstadt; and last but not least, DiscourseNet, which unites discourse
researchers across national and disciplinary borders all over the world.
v
vi Acknowledgements
This volume would not have seen the light without the support of
many colleagues and friends. I am grateful to the anonymous reviewers
who provided me with detailed and encouraging feedback. I also thank
the series editor Johannes Angermuller and the editorial assistant Beth
Farrow from Palgrave for supporting this publication project throughout
with great enthusiasm. Finally, I am thankful to my wife Joy Malala and
to our new-born son Gabriel Amani for tolerating the extra hours that I
had to put into editing this volume.
Praise for Quantifying Approaches to
Discourse for Social Scientists
“In today’s complex world of communication there is an urgent need to stand
back, to analyse, and to ask what is going on. This multi-national collection of
papers by communication scientists does just that. The papers in this book not
only provide technical tools of both a quantitative and a qualitative kind, they
make possible a perspective that gives objectivity to our understanding of the
disturbing world of words in which we flounder.”
—Paul Chilton, Emeritus Professor, Department of Linguistics and English
Language, Lancaster University, UK
“This is a very welcome addition to the literature on quantitative methods
for the analysis of language and meaning-making processes. Taking into
account textual and social contexts of language use including extra-t extual
contexts the volume convincingly demonstrates that quantifying approaches
to discourse should not – and cannot – be reduced to the mere counting of
words. This book will be of use to students and researchers interested in
particular in the challenges posed by big data and technology- driven lan-
guage practices.”
—Alexandra Homolar, Associate Professor of International Security, Department
of Politics and International Studies, The University of Warwick, UK
“Bringing together a wide range of quantitative approaches to discourse analysis
which stretch far beyond the relatively well established methods of corpus lin-
vii
viii Praise for Quantifying Approaches to Discourse for Social Scientists
guistics, this volume provides a great overview for both beginners and experts in
the field of quantitative discourse analysis.”
—Professor Annika Mattissek, Professor for Economic Geography and Sustainable
Development, Department of Geography, University of Freiburg, Germany
“In the fast-moving field of text processing, keeping up with methodological
innovation can be a real challenge. This volume provides social scientists with a
rich and varied palette of approaches and tools, combining sound theoretical
foundations with practical advice on methods.”
—Professor Gerlinde Mautner, Institute for English Business Communication,
Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria
“With the discourse turn in the social sciences, the need for a state of the art
guide to practice and theory of meaning construction is evident. In this volume,
leading British and continental scholars present quantitative and qualitative
methods of exploring discourse and the wider context into which texts are
embedded, while discussing and bringing together the approaches of Critical
Discourse Analysis and the Foucauldian dispositif. Long overdue!”
—Wolfgang Teubert, Emeritus Professor, Department of English Language and
Linguistics, University of Birmingham, UK
Contents
Part I Introductory Remarks 1
1 Understanding Twenty-First-Century Societies Using
Quantifying Text- Processing Methods 3
Ronny Scholz
2 Beyond the Quantitative and Qualitative Cleavage:
Confluence of Research Operations in Discourse Analysis 23
Jules Duchastel and Danielle Laberge
Part II Analysing Institutional Contexts of Discourses 49
3 The Academic Dispositif: Towards a Context-Centred
Discourse Analysis 51
Julian Hamann, Jens Maesse, Ronny Scholz, and Johannes
Angermuller
ix