Yonghwan's Questions

1. We did a group assignment (News Program Analysis), a discourse analysis of 60 minutes reporting a sort of unknown prison called Supermax in which inmates are terrorists and gangs. We found that each person had different interpretations on latent meaning and implicit patterns of the text. This may emphasis the interpretive position of the researcher when it comes to “reading” a text. Then, what seems to be differences of positions they (literature) refer? Individual background? Stereotypes or bias? How can we explain what makes different interpretations?

2. Turned to triangulation for showing a validity of the research, in our case, it turned out two researchers showed different analysis or interpretation on a same text. Then does this mean a low validity of the study or a flexibility of qualitative research?

3. It seems to me that a discourse analysis and a metaphorical analysis are closely related each other. What’s the relationship between these two analyses? What’s similarity and difference between these two analyses? When I did a group assignment, I found several metaphors such as “a clean version of hell” and “the perfect of isolation.” And I interpreted that these metaphors may employ/indicate a powerful system of the US for maintaining the US security. Is this making sense?

4. It has been stated, which is interesting to me, that “Foucault’s theory of the social order, discourse practices enact and reinforce dominance relations, by which social position, relations, and identity are constructed”; and “while cognitive metaphor research focuses on isolating the governing type of discourse material, and explains metaphor’s unique role in conceptualizing the social order, Foucault’s model offers a more comprehensive explanation of the discourse processes by which the social order is established and maintained” (in Ana’s piece). In which sense they are different? What could be examples of these two models/approaches?

5. I am still not clear on what are the differences of thematic analysis, critical discourse analysis, ideological analysis, genre analysis, and cultural analysis in terms of interpretative strategies? More practically when it comes to doing research, which research question or topics are most appropriate for each analysis? (which I asked last week) In addition, what seems to be examples of semiotic and Marxist analysis?—anyone who shows examples of research questions and appropriate topics, and method for each analysis?