Conceptualizing Discursive Analysis as a Culturally Contextualized Activity
Conceptualizing Discursive Analysis as a Culturally Contextualized Activity
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Date
2019
Authors
Adjei, S Baffour
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TQR
Abstract
Discursive psychology recognizes the primacy of the social and relational nature of human life. Research
participants whose discourses (empirical data) we analyze do not exist independent of material and social
world. In this paper, I attempt to develop an understanding of discursive analysis of social and psychological
phenomena as a culturally contextualized activity in which discursive researchers analyze and interpret
participants’ discourses in the light of the cultural context in which the discourses are embedded. First, I
provide a brief background to discursive psychology. Second, I discuss the cultural embeddedness of
discursive analysis. I then conceptualize discursive data analysis as a culturally contextualized enterprise by
drawing upon my own reflexive accounts on gender-based violence research to illustrate how discursive
analysts can bring together an analysis of in-the-moment performative accounting with an understanding of
the cultural context in which this accounting is embedded. I argue for and foreground research participants’
lived experiences and the embodied socio-cultural meanings as origins of the consciousness and social
behavior of people with whom and about whom psychological research is conducted. I conclude that data
analysis is not and cannot be an innocent activity; it involves active thinking through the cultural lens of both
the researcher and the researched.
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Citation
Adjei, S. B. (2019). Conceptualizing discursive analysis as a culturally contextualized activity. The Qualitative Report, 24(9), 2233-2243.