On Recruiting Conversation Analysis for Critical Realist Purposes

Abstract

In this paper I provide a summary and evaluation of some of the key features of Sims-Schouten, Riley and Willig's multi-level, `critical realist' approach to discourse analysis, as exemplified in their study of motherhood, childcare and female employment. I argue that (i) their analyses recruit and depend on arguments and techniques from the very perspectives they criticize, and (ii) those techniques are deployed in a somewhat ad hoc fashion. Consequently, I suggest that the authors fail to provide a distinctive or systematic operationalization of a critical realist discourse analysis. I end by arguing that if critical realists really want to understand what (purportedly extra-discursive) factors account for why participants say what they do, then they need to begin by adopting a more reflexive approach to their data, and pay serious attention to analysing the interview as an interview, and as an occasion for interaction in its own right.

Keywords

constructionism conversation analysis critical realism discourse analysis interview data reflexivity

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