Quantitative Data Discourse Analysis: Identifying the Construction of Knowledge Within Quantitative Data Reporting Using Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis Three-Dimensional Framework

• In Event: Roundtable Session 17
  In Roundtable Session: Interrogating Data Analysis

Abstract

This paper introduces quantitative data discourse analysis as a viable research methodology within qualitative research discourse. I argue that the method by which numerical data are reported (and by whom) reifies certain prevailing ideology and constructs false knowledge about what the numbers represents. I take the case of Compton city and schools, which have historically faced financial hardship leading to the school district’s filing of bankruptcy in 1993, to analyze the mechanism by which data were reported and how political and economic structures of domination were masked by ill-reported numerical data. This qualitative method uses Fairclough’s (1992) Critical Discourse Analysis framework to interrogate and examine quantitative data from Compton that has been used by researchers and policy makers alike.

Author

• Lynette Parker, Re.Source Education Consulting