Discourse Analysis

Discourse analysis (DA) studies how language makes social and political reality. A DA thesis needs a defined tradition and a clear account of which textual features matter.

In the programs I supervise, most DA projects draw on critical discourse analysis, IR discourse analysis, or poststructuralist discourse theory.

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What Is Discourse Analysis?

Discourse analysis examines how language constructs social realities and power relations. It asks how texts create identities and make some ways of thinking appear natural while others drop out of view. The shared premise is simple: language helps make the world it describes.

Past that shared premise, the approaches diverge. They differ on what counts as “discourse,” where power sits, how closely to analyze texts, and what kind of claim a thesis can make.

For thesis students in the social sciences and humanities, the main choices are usually these.

• Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) focuses on how language reproduces or challenges power and inequality, with close attention to textual features.
• Discourse analysis in International Relations (IR DA) examines how foreign policy discourse constructs identities and threats.
• Poststructuralist discourse theory (PDT) analyzes broader systems of meaning and how they are contested.

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The Main Approaches

Critical Discourse Analysis

CDA, associated mainly with Norman Fairclough and Ruth Wodak, analyzes the relationship between language use and social power. Its central claim is dialectical. Discourse is shaped by social structures and actively shapes them in return (Fairclough (1992) and Fairclough and Wodak (1997)).

CDA works at the level of specific texts. You examine linguistic features and connect them to wider social and political processes. Fairclough’s three-dimensional model is the most widely used framework:

1. Text. The linguistic features of the text itself.
2. Discursive practice. How the text was produced, distributed, and consumed.
3. Social practice. The wider social and political context the text helps constitute.

CDA is openly normative. It aims to show how language sustains inequality. The approach treats that critical stance as a strength (Wodak and Meyer (2016)).

Choose CDA when the question asks how specific actors naturalize or challenge power relations through language. Examples include how policy documents frame migration and how political speeches construct national identity.

Discourse Analysis in IR

Discourse analysis in International Relations draws on poststructuralist theory but has developed its own distinctive methods, especially through the work of Lene Hansen and Jennifer Milliken. The central concern is how foreign policy discourse constructs the identities and threats that make particular policies appear necessary or legitimate (Milliken, 1999 and Hansen, 2006).

IR DA usually asks you to track these elements.

• Identity construction. How “Self” and “Other” are defined in relational terms, such as a secure Europe defined against a threatening East
• Linking and differentiation. How identities are constructed through chains of association and opposition
• Policy possibility. How certain policies become “natural” or “necessary” once particular identities and threats are established

A key text is Hansen’s Security as Practice (2006). It provides a theoretical framework and offers concrete research designs for studying how foreign policy discourse links identity and policy. The Copenhagen School’s securitization framework (Buzan, Waever, and de Wilde (1998)) is a related but distinct approach that examines how issues are discursively constructed as existential threats.

IR DA fits questions about identity, threat construction, and foreign policy legitimation. Examples include how EU enlargement discourse constructs European identity and how counterterrorism discourse defines the terrorist Other.

Poststructuralist Discourse Theory

Poststructuralist discourse theory (PDT), rooted in the work of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe (Laclau and Mouffe (1985)), takes the broadest view of discourse. The tradition draws on Michel Foucault’s foundational insights about discourse and its relation to knowledge and power. Laclau and Mouffe depart from Foucault in important ways. For them, discourse takes in the social practices and institutions through which meaning is produced, well beyond language alone. The analytical task is to examine how systems of meaning achieve temporary stability and how that stability is later contested.

Key concepts include:

• Nodal points. Privileged signs around which a discourse is organized, such as “democracy” or “security”
• Chains of equivalence. How different signs are linked together to form a coherent discourse
• Chains of difference. How discourses differentiate themselves from competing systems of meaning
• Floating signifiers. Signs whose meaning is contested between competing discourses, such as “justice”
• Hegemony. The process by which a particular discourse achieves dominance and its meanings come to appear natural

David Howarth’s Discourse (Howarth (2000)) provides an accessible introduction. Jørgensen and Phillips (2002) offers a clear comparative overview of this and other approaches.

PDT fits projects about how political projects struggle over meaning. Examples include how populist discourse restructures the meaning of “the people” and how competing discourses define “sustainability.”

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Choosing an Approach

The approach you choose should follow from your research question. Each approach makes different assumptions and asks different kinds of questions. The decision points below usually narrow the choice quickly.

What is your unit of analysis?

• Specific texts and their linguistic features (speeches or policy documents analyzed at the level of individual words and rhetorical structures) -> lean toward CDA
• Foreign policy texts and the identities they construct (official statements and parliamentary debates analyzed for Self/Other constructions) -> lean toward IR DA
• Broader systems of meaning across multiple sites (how a concept like “security” or “development” is defined differently across competing political projects) -> lean toward PDT

What is your relationship to power?

• You want to critique how language sustains specific power relations or inequalities -> CDA (which is explicitly critical and normative)
• You want to show how discourse enables certain policies by constructing identities and threats -> IR DA (analytical, though informed by poststructuralist critique)
• You want to map how competing political projects struggle over meaning -> PDT (focused on hegemonic contestation)

How fine-grained is your textual analysis?

• Very fine-grained. You will analyze specific word choices, grammatical constructions, metaphors, and rhetorical devices within individual texts -> CDA
• Moderately fine-grained. You will analyze how texts construct identities and link them to policy positions, but without detailed linguistic analysis -> IR DA
• Broader. You are mapping how signs are organized into systems of meaning across a range of texts and practices -> PDT

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What to Look For in Texts

One of the harder parts of discourse analysis is knowing what to look for once you are sitting in front of your texts. Each approach directs your attention to different textual features. The lists below are selective, but they give you a concrete starting point for your analysis.

CDA: Linguistic and Rhetorical Features

Drawing on Fairclough (1992) and Van Dijk (2008):

Feature	What to look for	Example
Vocabulary	Word choices that carry ideological weight, including naming and labeling	“Illegal aliens” vs. “undocumented migrants” vs. “irregular arrivals”
Grammar and agency	Active vs. passive voice, including who is the agent and who is acted upon. Also note nominalization, which turns processes into things	“The police shot protesters” vs. “Protesters were shot” vs. “The shooting of protesters”
Metaphor	Figurative language that structures how we think about an issue	“Flood of refugees,” “war on terror,” “level playing field”
Presupposition	What the text takes for granted as already established truth	“We need to restore order” presupposes that order has been lost
Modality	Degrees of certainty, obligation, or permission (must, should, may, might)	“We must act now” vs. “We could consider acting”
Intertextuality	References to or incorporation of other texts and genres	A policy document quoting scientific reports to legitimize its claims
Cohesion and argumentation	How the text structures its reasoning, what evidence it invokes, and how it builds toward conclusions	Causal claims, conditional reasoning, appeals to authority

IR DA: Identity and Policy Constructions

Drawing on Hansen (2006) and Milliken (1999):

Feature	What to look for	Example
Self/Other construction	How “we” are defined in opposition to “them” and what qualities are attributed to each	“The free world” vs. “rogue states”
Linking	How different positive qualities are chained together to construct an identity	Democracy + freedom + human rights + modernity = “the West”
Differentiation	How the Other is constructed through contrasting qualities	Civilized/barbaric, rational/irrational, peaceful/aggressive
Degrees of Otherness	Whether the Other is radical (fundamentally different) or less radical (different but recognizable)	Enemy vs. rival vs. competitor
Temporal constructions	How past, present, and future are narrated to justify policy	“We learned from Munich that appeasement fails”
Policy as natural consequence	How discourse makes specific policies appear as the only logical or moral response	“Given the threat, we have no choice but to intervene”
Spatial constructions	How geographic and political spaces are discursively constructed	“The European neighborhood,” “the arc of instability”

PDT: Discursive Structures

Drawing on Laclau and Mouffe (1985) and Jørgensen and Phillips (2002):

Feature	What to look for	Example
Nodal points	Central signs that organize the discourse, meaning the key terms everything else connects to	“Sustainability” in environmental discourse and “security” in defense discourse
Chains of equivalence	How different signs are linked to produce a unified meaning	Freedom = democracy = market economy = the West
Chains of difference	How signs are distinguished from each other within a discourse	Differentiating types of migration: economic, political, humanitarian
Floating signifiers	Key terms whose meaning is contested between discourses	“Justice,” “development,” “the people”
Moments vs. elements	Signs whose meaning is temporarily fixed within the discourse (moments), compared with signs whose meaning remains open (elements)	In neoliberal discourse, “growth” is a moment while “equality” may be an element
Antagonistic boundaries	Where one discourse defines itself against another, usually by drawing a frontier between “us” and “them”	Populist discourse drawing a line between “the elite” and “the people”
Hegemonic articulations	Attempts to fix meaning and present a particular interpretation as universal or natural	“There is no alternative” (TINA)

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When to Use It

Discourse analysis is appropriate when your research question is about how language and meaning shape social and political realities. The object of study is the way actors say things and how those formulations produce particular understandings of the world.

Use discourse analysis when:

• You want to understand how language constructs a particular issue or policy
• You care about what is taken for granted and left unsaid, as much as what is explicitly stated
• You want to show how language enables or constrains political possibilities
• Your research question asks “how” something is discursively constructed

Do not use discourse analysis when:

• You want to measure the frequency of themes or frames across a large corpus (that is content analysis or quantitative framing analysis)
• You need to establish causal relationships between variables
• You want to assess whether claims are factually true or false
• Your interest is in what people think or intend (interview-based methods are a better fit)

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How to Apply It

The specific analytical work differs by approach, but the overall process follows a common shape. The steps below apply to all three approaches, with notes where they diverge.

Step 1: Ground yourself in the theory

Before touching your data, read at least two foundational texts from your chosen approach. You need to understand the theoretical assumptions as well as the analytical techniques. Discourse analysis without theory is just impressionistic reading.

• CDA. Start with Jørgensen and Phillips (2002), chapters 3-4, then Fairclough (1992) or Wodak and Meyer (2016)
• IR DA. Start with Milliken (1999), then Hansen (2006), chapters 1-5
• PDT. Start with Jørgensen and Phillips (2002), chapter 2, then Howarth (2000)

Step 2: Build your corpus

Select your texts with explicit selection criteria. Your corpus should be:

• Relevant to your research question
• Bounded by clear selection criteria such as time period and source type
• Justified, meaning you can explain why these texts belong in the corpus

See Building a Corpus for detailed guidance.

Step 3: Develop your analytical framework

Here you specify what you will look for and why. Using the “What to Look For” tables above, pick the analytical categories most relevant to your research question. Your framework should:

• Name the approach you are using and its core assumptions
• Specify which textual features you will analyze (e.g., “I will analyze vocabulary, metaphor, and agency attribution following Fairclough’s three-dimensional model”)
• Explain why these features matter for your research question
• Define key analytical concepts in your own words. Defining them yourself is how you show you understand them

Step 4: Read and code your texts

Read each text more than once, and bring a different focus to each pass.

1. First reading. Read for overall meaning and context. What is this text doing? Who produced it, and for whom?
2. Second reading. Code for your selected analytical features. Mark vocabulary choices, metaphors, identity constructions, nodal points, whatever your framework specifies. Go through each feature across each text in turn.
3. Third reading. Look for patterns across your coded features. What patterns emerge? What is consistent? What cuts against the pattern?

Step 5: Identify patterns and construct your argument

Build up from individual textual observations to broader analytical claims:

• CDA. Connect textual features to discursive practices (how the text was produced and circulated) and social practices (what power relations it sustains or challenges)
• IR DA. Show how identity constructions link to and enable specific policies. Trace how Self/Other constructions remain stable or shift across texts
• PDT. Map the discursive structure. Identify nodal points, chains of equivalence and difference, and antagonistic boundaries. Then show how meaning is fixed or contested

Step 6: Write up your analysis

Present your findings using direct quotations from your texts as evidence. Every analytical claim has to be supported by textual evidence. See “Structuring Your Thesis” below for how to organize this.

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Structuring Your Thesis

A discourse analysis thesis follows the same general structure as any thesis. The analytical framework and findings chapters carry specific requirements. What follows is a chapter-by-chapter guide.

Introduction

A standard introduction covers the research question and relevance, followed by a brief overview of approach and case. Then give the chapter outline. DA adds one requirement. Make clear that you are studying how something is discursively constructed.

Literature Review

Situate your research question within existing scholarship. Two strands are in play. The first is the substantive literature on your topic, such as EU enlargement or climate change politics. The second is the discourse-analytical literature relevant to your area. Show what previous DA scholarship on your topic has found and where your thesis contributes something new.

Analytical Framework

This chapter is critical. It must be explicit about the choices that make the analysis work.

1. Specify your DA approach. State whether you are using CDA, IR DA, PDT, or a combination, and explain the core theoretical assumptions. Naming the approach is not enough. You have to show that you understand its epistemological and ontological commitments.

2. Define your analytical categories. Specify which textual features you will analyze and why. A model sentence might read, “Following Fairclough’s three-dimensional model, I analyze vocabulary choices and metaphors at the textual level, intertextuality at the level of discursive practice, and the reproduction of neoliberal governance at the level of social practice.” Be explicit and precise.

3. Describe your corpus and method of analysis. Which texts did you select, and why? How will you analyze them? Explain your coding process. If you have selection criteria, state them.

Findings / Analysis

The findings chapter should present the analysis in a consistent order, organized by theme or by analytical category. Choose whichever structure best serves your argument.

• Show your work. Use direct quotations from your texts as evidence. Instead of claiming that “the discourse constructs migrants as a threat,” show how it does so, with specific examples of vocabulary and identity constructions.
• Alternate between text and interpretation. For each observation, explain what the textual feature is and why it matters according to your framework, then what it tells us about your research question.
• Apply your framework consistently. Use the same categories across all texts. If you analyze metaphors in one text, analyze them in all texts. Inconsistent application undermines your credibility.
• Connect micro to macro. Individual textual features are only interesting insofar as they point to broader patterns. Always connect specific observations to larger discursive patterns and back to your research question.

Conclusion

Summarize your findings and answer your research question, then discuss the broader implications. What does your analysis show about how discourse shapes the social or political phenomenon you studied? Discuss limitations honestly, including the limitations of your analytical approach and corpus selection.

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Example from the Literature

Hansen’s Security as Practice (2006) is a useful model for IR DA. Hansen analyzes Western discourse on the Bosnian War (1992-1995) to show how representations of Balkan identity shaped, and in fact constrained, the foreign policy options available to Western governments. She traces how the conflict was discursively framed through competing constructions. The Balkans appeared as a site of “ancient ethnic hatreds,” as a “European” crisis demanding intervention, or as genocide requiring moral action. Hansen demonstrates how each framing linked particular identities to particular policies. The “ancient hatreds” discourse, for instance, constructed Balkan peoples as fundamentally different from “civilized” Europeans, which made non-intervention appear reasonable. If the violence was rooted in centuries-old tribal enmities, outside intervention would be futile.

The design lesson is straightforward. Hansen states the framework and selects texts by explicit criteria: official speeches, parliamentary debates, and media commentary across multiple Western states. Each claim is grounded in textual evidence. The study goes further than reporting what actors said about Bosnia. It shows how the way they said it constituted identities and enabled or foreclosed specific policy responses.

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Common Pitfalls

Discourse analysis is one of the most frequently misapplied methods in student theses. Below are the most common problems and how to avoid them.

1. No theoretical framework. The thesis claims to do “discourse analysis” but does not engage with any DA tradition. The student reads texts and reports what they say, without theoretical grounding for how they analyze the texts or why certain textual features matter. Choose a specific approach (CDA, IR DA, PDT) and read its foundational texts. Then build an explicit analytical framework that specifies your theoretical commitments and analytical categories. If you cannot name the approach you are using and explain its assumptions, choose a different method label.

2. Confusing discourse analysis with close reading or summarizing. The findings chapter describes what texts say: their content and arguments. DA needs analysis of how texts construct meaning. Always ask “how does this text construct X?” Focus on the mechanisms of meaning-making, including word choices, metaphors, identity constructions, and presuppositions. Your job is to show how language works. Content summary should stay brief and subordinate to the analysis.

3. Impressionistic analysis. The analysis cherry-picks interesting quotes without a repeatable procedure. The student finds striking examples that support their argument but does not apply their framework consistently across all texts. Apply your analytical framework to every text in your corpus using the same categories. Code each text against those same categories. Report patterns, including patterns that complicate or contradict your expectations. An analytical journal and a consistent coding process will help.

4. Isolated text-level findings. The analysis stays at the level of individual textual features without explaining what they mean for the broader social or political question. The student identifies metaphors or identity constructions but never explains so what. Every textual observation needs to be connected upward to broader discursive patterns, and from those patterns to your research question and its social or political significance. CDA’s three-dimensional model is useful here even if you are not doing CDA. Work from text up to discursive practice, then to social practice.

5. Treating discourse as a synonym for “what people say.” The student uses “discourse” to mean “discussion” or “debate” and never engages with the concept’s theoretical meaning. The thesis says things like “the discourse on climate change” when it really means “what politicians say about climate change.” In DA, “discourse” carries a specific theoretical meaning, namely a system of meaning that constitutes social reality. If you are using the term, use it precisely. If your analysis does not engage with how language constitutes reality, use a different method label.

6. Overambitious corpus. The student collects hundreds of texts and produces a superficial analysis of each. A deep analysis of 15-30 well-chosen texts is stronger than a surface reading of 200. Talk corpus size and selection through with your supervisor.

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Key Readings

Introductory and Comparative

• Jørgensen, M. W., & Phillips, L. J. (2002). Discourse Analysis as Theory and Method. Sage. DOI: 10.4135/9781849208871. Start here. The best single overview of CDA, PDT, and discursive psychology, with clear comparisons. Essential reading for any DA thesis.
• Gee, J. P. (2025). An Introduction to Discourse Analysis: Theory and Method (5th ed.). Routledge. Accessible introduction with practical guidance on conducting analysis.

Critical Discourse Analysis

• Fairclough, N. (1992). Discourse and Social Change. Polity Press. The foundational text for Fairclough’s three-dimensional model. Essential for CDA theses.
• Wodak, R., & Meyer, M. (Eds.). (2016). Methods of Critical Discourse Studies (3rd ed.). Sage. Comprehensive overview of different CDA approaches and their methodological steps.
• Fairclough, N., & Wodak, R. (1997). Critical discourse analysis. In T. A. van Dijk (Ed.), Discourse as Social Interaction (Vol. 2, pp. 258-284). Sage. Concise overview of CDA’s principles and methods.
• Van Dijk, T. A. (2008). Discourse and Context: A Sociocognitive Approach. Cambridge University Press. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511481499. Van Dijk’s sociocognitive approach emphasizes the mental models mediating between discourse and society.

Discourse Analysis in International Relations

• Milliken, J. (1999). The study of discourse in international relations: A critique of research and methods. European Journal of International Relations, 5(2), 225-254. DOI: 10.1177/1354066199005002003. Essential. Defines what DA means in IR and evaluates existing scholarship.
• Hansen, L. (2006). Security as Practice: Discourse, Identity, and the Question of European Defense. Routledge. DOI: 10.4324/9780203236338. Essential. Provides both theory and concrete research designs for DA in IR. Chapters 1-5 are required reading for any IR DA thesis.
• Buzan, B., Waever, O., & de Wilde, J. (1998). Security: A New Framework for Analysis. Lynne Rienner. Introduces the securitization framework. Relevant if your topic involves how issues are framed as security threats.

Poststructuralist Discourse Theory

• Laclau, E., & Mouffe, C. (1985). Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. Verso. The foundational text for PDT. Theoretically dense, so read Howarth (2000) or Jørgensen and Phillips (2002) first.
• Howarth, D. (2000). Discourse. Open University Press. Clear, accessible introduction to discourse theory from a Laclau-Mouffe perspective. Good starting point for PDT.

Applied Examples

• Hajer, M. A. (1995). The Politics of Environmental Discourse: Ecological Modernization and the Policy Process. Oxford University Press. Excellent example of discourse analysis applied to environmental politics. Shows how discourse coalitions form around shared storylines.

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Related Methods

Two pages are worth checking before you commit to DA.

• Framing Analysis is a better fit when the project needs a codebook and a clearer count of how issues are presented.

• Building a Corpus is the place to settle source selection, search records, file naming, and exclusions before close reading begins.