Last update: Mirna Jusić, M.A., Ph.D. (26.02.2024)
One of the important features of contemporary society is that it produces a large amount of self-descriptions; by the words of Niklas Luhmann, the modern society is an intensively self-observing and self-reporting system. The aim of this course is to provide students with knowledge of relatively broad issues of methods of analysis of these self-descriptions, which are mainly texts in their nature (media texts, biographic narratives, conversations, open-ended questions in questionnaires, expert discourse texts etc.). The successful student will become fluent in the vocabulary of narrative, discursive, content, and computer-assisted text analyses and bring those tools to bear on various kinds of texts.
Aim of the course
Last update: doc. Mgr. Martin Hájek, Ph.D. (22.01.2022)
The aim of this course is to provide students with knowledge of relatively broad issues of methods of analysis of these self-descriptions, which are mainly texts in their nature (media texts, biographic narratives, conversations, open-ended questions in questionnaires, expert discourse texts etc.). The successful student will become fluent in the vocabulary of narrative, discursive, content, and computer-assisted text analyses and bring those tools to bear on various kinds of texts.
Course completion requirements
Last update: doc. Mgr. Martin Hájek, Ph.D. (22.01.2022)
Course requirements and assignments.
Assignment guidelines: 1. Seven pieces of homework (42 points) 2. Term paper: A paper based on student's research. Each student should carry out an analysis on the topic of his/her choice. Extending a selected piece of homework is recommended but not necessary. Using one's own data is welcome. (30 points) 3. Oral examination - a general knowledge of the text, narrative and discourse analyses presented in the course, including recommended readings. Two questions followed by a discussion of the term paper. (28 points).
To succesfully finish the course, any student has to achieve at least a half of the points in every assignment, i.e., 21 pts. for homework, 15 pts. for the term paper, and 14 pts. in oral examination.
Evaluation: 91 - 100 points: excellent (A) 81 - 90 points: very good (B) 71 - 80 points: good (C) 61 - 70 points: satisfactory (D) 51 - 60 points: sufficient (E) less than 50 points: failed (F)
Literature
Last update: Mirna Jusić, M.A., Ph.D. (26.02.2024)
Obligatory reading:
Baker, P. Using Corpora in Discourse Analysis. 2006. Ch. Frequency and Dispersion. Bazerman, Ch. What Writing Does and How It Does It. 2004. Ch. Intertextuality. Chatman, S. Story and discourse. 1980. Ch. Introduction. Eco, U. The Role of the Reader. 1976. Ch. Introduction. Fairclough, N. A social theory of discourse. In: Discourse and Social Change. 1992. Foucault, M. The Order of Discourse. 1970. Grice, P. Studies in the Way of Words. 1991. Ch. Logic and Conversation. Hall, S. Encoding/decoding. Culture, media, language. 1980. Hall, K. Performativity. 2000. Labov, W. Language in the inner city. 1972. Ch. The transformation of experience in narrative syntax. Martin, N., & Storr, V. H. (2012). Talk changes things: The implications of McCloskey's Bourgeois Dignity for historical inquiry. The Journal of Socio-Economics, 41(6), 787-791. 2012. Squire, C. Approaches to narrative research. 2008. Titscher (ed.). Methods of text and discourse analysis. 2000. Ch. What is a Text? van Leeuwen, T. The representation of social actors. 1995.
Recommended textbook: Bischoping, K. & Gazso, A. Analyzing Talk in the Social Sciences: Narrative, Conversation and Discourse Strategies. Sage. 2016
Recommended reading: Paulus, T. M., & Lester, J. N. (2020). Using software to support qualitative data analysis. In Handbook of Qualitative Research in Education. Edward Elgar Publishing. Silge, J., & Robinson, D. (2017). Text mining with R: A tidy approach. O'Reilly Media, Inc. https://www.tidytextmining.com/index.html
Syllabus
Last update: Mirna Jusić, M.A., Ph.D. (26.02.2024)
1. Introductory class
2. A text - key concepts; homework 1
3. Levels of text analysis 1 - operative and cooperative reading; homework 2
4. Levels of text analysis 2 - word, sentence and supra-sentence level; homework 3
