Studying social power in textual data: combining tools for analyzing meaning and positioning
Year: 2010
Type: article
Abstract: Texts are language excerpts produced from specific points of view; they communicate specific worldviews and values. This implies that social science research on power in texts can benefit from an analysis of the perspective from which a story is presented. Nevertheless, discussion of concrete tools for doing this at the level of practical analysis is less common. This article describes a set of tools for analyzing positioning at two different levels: the level of enunciation – which focuses on narrator and audience positions – and the level of utterance – which focuses on positions in stories. Moreover, addressing readers less familiar with discourse analysis and students new to discourse analysis, the article argues that combining tools for analyzing positioning with more general tools for analyzing meaning is advantageous because this allows for more detailed analysis of social power in texts and for more detailed description of the analytical process.
Source: Critical Discourse Studies
Author: Alexandra Bogren
Institution: Stockholm University
Language: English
Subfield: Literature and Literary Theory
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2071477634