Thematic Analysis and/Through Languaging Practices (Poster 1)

• In Event: Themes Without Coding: Expanding Approaches to Thematic Analysis

Abstract

In this poster, we introduce a methodological, theoretical, and analytical perspective that we have used and developed in our work to study languaging practices (e.g., social interactions, texts, images, etc.). In our discussion, we define languaging practices as encompassing the full range of how people go about interacting with their social world(s). Many scholars who carry out discourse analysis or conversation analysis studies often do not characterize what they ultimately come to produce as ‘themes’, although there are exceptions (see Warren & Ward, 2019, for an example of a thematic discourse analysis study). In our own work, we often characterize our findings as discursive patterns, recurring practices, and/or contextures, among other concepts, and we have found generative connections with the practice of producing themes. Thus, in this methodological poster, we foreground how this approach to the study of languaging practices might serve to deepen and expand the production of themes and the practice of thematic analysis.

In our approach to the study of languaging practices, we engage both dialectical thinking and categorical thinking. As Freeman noted (2016), there are different modes of thinking that shape analysis, with the modes often presenting “distinct forms of analysis that, while co-existing, are also critiques of one another” (xii, emphasis added). Dialectical thinking is most often associated with approaches such as discourse analysis and conversation analysis, with categorical thinking often linked to thematic analysis. Notably, what we have come to call discursive patterns, recurring practices, and/or contextures might also be names ‘themes’ – wherein themes are characterized or defined by actions, interactional dynamics, and functions. We argue that analyzing interactional patterns across instances is useful because it illuminates the mundane and contingent yet routinized practices for (re)producing social order. Studying these sites of recurrence open up possibilities for considering alternative ways of worldmaking, living, and being together.

In this poster, we thus offer a general overview of the theory of language that undergirds our approach to analysis. We draw upon the works of scholars such as hooks (1989), Edwards and Potter (1992), Garfinkel (2002), Rawls and Duck (2020), among others – and lay the foundation for our epistemological commitments and approach to studying social life. Analytically, the practice we engage is one that is located within the broad domain of discourse analysis approaches. We thus offer a roadmap for how scholars might conduct fine-grained analyses of languaging practices. Following an overview of our theoretical grounding, we provide an abbreviated history of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis in particular and outline the approaches that are linked to it. Next, we discuss the preferred data sources (e.g., interactional data), methods of analysis, and quality criteria that are commonly taken up in this kind of scholarship. We illustrate how to carry out a micro-analysis of interactional data, and point to how what we ultimately come to produce is a detailed account of recurring languaging practices, which can be named a key ‘theme’. To conclude, we offer an illustrative example that draws from an interactional data set.

Authors

• Francesca A. Williamson, University of Michigan

• Jessica Nina Lester, Indiana University