Discourse analysis

Eleftheria Tseliou and Filippos Tentolouris

Chapter 8 in Elgar Concise Encyclopedia of Research Methods in the Social Sciences, 2026, pp 56-63 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Discourse analysis (DA) is an umbrella term referring to a multiplicity of approaches across disciplines in the social sciences and humanities, like linguistics, psychology, education, sociology and literary studies. Despite their different epistemological and theoretical underpinnings, such approaches share the view that language in use is not only constitutive of social and psychological phenomena but also historically and ideologically laden. DA approaches provide systematic ways to study oral, written and multimodal texts including conversations and currently comprise various methodological proposals within qualitative research. In this entry, we first provide an overview of DA approaches reporting the lack of a homogeneous definition of DA. We then illustrate basic tenets and characteristics of DA approaches as well as a brief overview of key, interdisciplinary DA approaches, including discursive psychology, Foucauldian discourse analysis and critical discourse analysis. We conclude with briefly discussing existing applications and future directions for DA.

Keywords: Critical Discourse Analysis; Discourse Analysis; Discursive Psychology; Foucauldian Discourse Analysis; Qualitative Research (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781803921297
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