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?

DA asks how texts create identities and power relations, and how they make some ways of thinking appear natural while others drop out of view. The shared premise is that language helps make the world it describes.

Where the approaches differ is in what counts as “discourse,” where power sits, how closely texts are read, and what kind of claim a thesis can make. One could simply read texts closely and summarize them. Using one of the approaches below as a lens for analysis is what makes the work discourse analysis.

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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 shapes them in return (Fairclough (1992) and Fairclough and Wodak (1997)).

CDA connects the linguistic features of specific texts 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 and treats that critical stance as a strength (Wodak and Meyer (2016)). Choose CDA when your question asks how specific actors naturalize or challenge power relations through language, for example how policy documents frame migration or how political speeches construct national identity.

Discourse Analysis in IR

IR discourse analysis draws on poststructuralist theory but has its own methods, developed especially by Lene Hansen and Jennifer Milliken. It asks how foreign policy discourse constructs the identities and threats that make particular policies appear necessary or legitimate (Milliken, 1999 and Hansen, 2006). The analysis tracks how Self and Other are defined against each other through chains of linking and differentiation, and how certain policies become “natural” once those identities and threats are in place (see the IR DA table below).

Hansen’s Security as Practice (2006) provides both theory and concrete research designs. 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, for example how EU enlargement discourse constructs European identity or how counterterrorism discourse defines the terrorist Other.

Poststructuralist Discourse Theory

Poststructuralist discourse theory, rooted in the work of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe (Laclau and Mouffe (1985)), takes the broadest view of discourse. It builds on Michel Foucault’s work on discourse, knowledge, and power but departs from him in important ways. For Laclau and Mouffe, discourse includes the social practices and institutions through which meaning is produced, well beyond language alone. The analytical task is to show how systems of meaning achieve temporary stability and how that stability is contested.

Its key concepts (nodal points, chains of equivalence and difference, floating signifiers, and hegemony, the process by which one discourse’s meanings come to appear natural) are set out in the PDT table below.

David Howarth’s Discourse (Howarth (2000)) is an accessible introduction, and Jørgensen and Phillips (2002) compare this and other approaches. PDT fits projects about how political projects struggle over meaning, for example how populist discourse redefines “the people” or how competing discourses define “sustainability.”

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Choosing an Approach

Let your research question decide. Three dimensions usually narrow the choice quickly.

	CDA	IR DA	PDT
Unit of analysis	Specific texts and their linguistic features, such as a speech read word by word	Foreign policy texts (statements, parliamentary debates) read for Self/Other constructions	Systems of meaning across sites, such as how competing projects define “security” or “development”
Relationship to power	Critique how language sustains power relations or inequalities (explicitly normative)	Show how constructed identities and threats enable policies (analytical, informed by poststructuralist critique)	Map how political projects struggle over meaning (hegemonic contestation)
Textual grain	Very fine (word choice, grammar, metaphor, rhetorical devices)	Moderate (identities and their link to policy, without detailed linguistic analysis)	Broad (how signs form systems of meaning across texts and practices)

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What to Look For in Texts

Each approach directs your attention to different features. These tables are selective starting points.

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	Who is the agent and who is acted upon (active vs. passive), and 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 and what evidence it invokes	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 against “them” and what qualities each is given	“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 the rest of the discourse 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 (moments) vs. still open (elements)	In neoliberal discourse, “growth” is a moment while “equality” may be an element
Antagonistic boundaries	Where a discourse draws 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 fits when your research question is about how language and meaning shape social and political realities.

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 stated
• You want to show how language enables or constrains political possibilities

Do not use discourse analysis when:

• You want to measure the frequency of themes or frames across a large corpus (use 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 fit better)

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How to Apply It

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 approach, for its assumptions as well as its techniques.

• 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 texts that are relevant to your question, bounded by explicit criteria such as time period and source type, and justified, so you can explain why each belongs. See Building a Corpus.

Step 3: Develop your analytical framework

Using the tables above, choose the features most relevant to your research question and explain why they matter. Name your approach and its core assumptions, and define key concepts in your own words to show you understand them. The Analytical Framework guidance below includes a model sentence.

Step 4: Read and code your texts

Read each text more than once, with a different focus each time.

1. First reading. Overall meaning and context. What is this text doing? Who produced it, and for whom?
2. Second reading. Code for your selected features (vocabulary choices, metaphors, identity constructions, nodal points, whatever your framework specifies), feature by feature and text by text.
3. Third reading. Look for patterns across the coded features. What is consistent, and what cuts against the pattern?

Step 5: Identify patterns and construct your argument

Build from individual observations to broader 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, and trace how Self/Other constructions hold or shift across texts
• PDT. Map the discursive structure (nodal points, chains of equivalence and difference, antagonistic boundaries) and show how meaning is fixed or contested

Step 6: Write up your analysis

Support every analytical claim with direct quotations from your texts. See Structuring Your Thesis below.

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Structuring Your Thesis

The analytical framework and findings chapters carry DA-specific requirements.

Introduction

Cover the research question and its relevance, your approach and case, and the chapter outline. Make clear that you are studying how something is discursively constructed.

Literature Review

Situate your question in the substantive literature on your topic and in the discourse-analytical work on it. Show what previous DA scholarship found and where your thesis adds something.

Analytical Framework

This chapter must make the analytical choices explicit.

1. Specify your DA approach. State whether you use CDA, IR DA, PDT, or a combination, and show that you understand its epistemological and ontological commitments. Naming the approach is not enough.
2. Define your analytical categories. Say which textual features you will analyze and why. A model sentence reads, “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.”
3. Describe your corpus and method. Which texts did you select and by what criteria? How did you code them?

Findings / Analysis

Organize the analysis by theme or by analytical category. Instead of claiming that “the discourse constructs migrants as a threat,” show how it does so through specific vocabulary and identity constructions. For each observation, explain the textual feature, why it matters in your framework, and what it says about your research question. Apply the same categories to every text, and link each observation to larger discursive patterns.

Conclusion

Answer your research question and discuss what your analysis shows about how discourse shapes the phenomenon you studied. Discuss the limitations of your approach and corpus selection honestly.

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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 constrained the policy options open to Western governments. The conflict was framed as a site of “ancient ethnic hatreds,” as a “European” crisis demanding intervention, or as genocide requiring moral action, and Hansen shows how each construction linked particular identities to particular policies. The “ancient hatreds” discourse cast Balkan peoples as fundamentally different from “civilized” Europeans. If the violence was rooted in centuries-old enmities, intervention looked futile and non-intervention reasonable.

The design lesson is that Hansen states her framework, selects texts by explicit criteria (official speeches, parliamentary debates, and media commentary across several Western states), and grounds each claim in textual evidence. The study shows how the way actors spoke about Bosnia constituted identities and enabled or foreclosed specific policy responses.

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Common Pitfalls

1. No theoretical framework. The thesis claims to do “discourse analysis” but reports what texts say without engaging a DA tradition. Choose an approach, read its foundational texts, and build an explicit framework. If you cannot name your approach and explain its assumptions, use a different method label.

2. Summarizing instead of analyzing. The findings describe what texts say. DA asks how texts construct meaning, through word choice, metaphor, identity construction, and presupposition. Keep content summary brief and subordinate to the analysis.

3. Impressionistic analysis. Cherry-picking striking quotes without a repeatable procedure. Code every text against the same categories and report patterns, including those that complicate your expectations. An analytical journal helps.

4. Isolated text-level findings. Identifying metaphors or identity constructions without explaining so what. Connect each observation to broader discursive patterns and then to your research question. Fairclough’s three dimensions are a useful guide even outside CDA.

5. Using “discourse” to mean “what people say.” “The discourse on climate change” often just means what politicians say about it. In DA, a discourse is a system of meaning that constitutes social reality. Use the term precisely, and if your analysis does not engage with how language constitutes reality, use a different method label.

6. Overambitious corpus. A deep analysis of 15-30 well-chosen texts is stronger than a surface reading of 200. Agree on corpus size 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 and comparison of CDA, PDT, and discursive psychology.
• Gee, J. P. (2025). An Introduction to Discourse Analysis: Theory and Method (5th ed.). Routledge. DOI: 10.4324/9781003535935. Accessible introduction with practical guidance on conducting analysis.

Critical Discourse Analysis

• Fairclough, N. (1992). Discourse and Social Change. Polity Press. The foundational text for the three-dimensional model. Essential for CDA theses.
• Wodak, R., & Meyer, M. (Eds.). (2016). Methods of Critical Discourse Studies (3rd ed.). Sage. Overview of 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 statement of CDA’s principles and methods.
• Van Dijk, T. A. (2008). Discourse and Context: A Sociocognitive Approach. Cambridge University Press. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511481499. The sociocognitive approach, which stresses 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. 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. Accessible introduction to discourse theory from a Laclau-Mouffe perspective.

Applied Examples

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

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Related Methods

• 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.