The combination of critical discourse analysis and social network analysis

Abstract

The recent shift influenced by sociocultural learning theories defines learning as meaningful changes in participation of a disciplinary practice. In a classroom community, a combination of collective and individual practice frames the meaningful changes in participation. This innovative shift in learning perspective asks for innovation in the methods for group interactions. As an attempt to answer these questions, the purpose of this chapter is to describe a mixed method that combines critical discourse analysis (CDA) and social network analysis (SNA) as an effective method of analyzing group interactions from a sociocultural learning perspective. Since CDA is a type of discourse analysis used primarily for studying power abuse, inequality, and dominance, it approaches discourse as situated products from particular sociocultural situations. Therefore, when CDA is applied in group interactions in an educational setting, the discourses that are used are analyzed in terms of their structure and functional uses and are interpreted reflectively from the implications of the cultural resources that are distributed and the expected impacts (e.g., social dynamics, power, and disposition). SNA enables researchers to understand the structure and dynamics of group interactions by collecting and analyzing the real-time flows of interactions and information. Combining CDA and SNA facilitates the analysis of group interactions by allowing researchers to link the meaning of the emergent interactions collectively and individually.