4.5.1 Steps taken in analysis
Most descriptions of how to do qualitative analysis come with the caveat that the description provided is by no means the one best way, but rather a sharing of experience (Symon & Cassell, 1998). The following is a description of my analysis technique.
Having transcribed the data, all the time gaining familiarity with it, the transcriptions were re- read in conjunction with the audio tapes, each time noting anything which might be of interest.
One starting point for carrying out discourse analysis is a suspension of belief in what is normally taken for granted in language use (Potter & Wetherell, 1987). How to analyse discourse depends on the questions you are asking, which determine the categories for coding (Gill, 1996).
In the present study some of these categories were relatively straightforward, for example apartheid and post-apartheid experiences. Others were less so, for example, categories of blackness. In the initial stage it is better to be as inclusive as possible and all vaguely relevant instances should be included (Potter & Wetherell, 1987). It is at this point that some more traditional qualitative studies end their analysis.
The second stage of analysis involves a questioning of the ways I make sense of something.
Instead of reading for gist, I had to interrogate „why am I reading this in this way?‟ (Gill, 1996).
The study aimed to capture the paradoxical relationship that exists between the discourse and the speaking subject. In this regard Wetherell et al. (2001b:210) argue that identity is informed at an unstable point when „unspeakable‟ stories of the subjective meet the narratives of the culture.
87 This means that when people talk (or think) about things, they do so in terms already provided for them by the history. They do so using a lexicon or repertoire of terms that has been provided by a particular historical era. Edley (2001a) writes that a language culture usually supplies a whole range of ways of talking about or constructing people, objects and events. Yet, some formulations and ways of talking are more „available‟ than others, because some ways of understanding the world have become culturally dominant or hegemonic. The aim of the analysis would be, amongst others, to establish whether new or different identities are emerging in the negotiation of blackness in the encounter with whiteness and encounter with the racism and what the consequences of these new identities are for self and the „other‟. A further feature of this analytical approach is that it is sensitive to the operation of power. It is possible to reveal whose best interests are served by the prevailing constructions of blackness and the ambivalence of black identity, for example, and to examine how black identity is constructed, reconstructed and transformed.
This phase of the analysis was made up of three related tasks. Firstly, there was the search for patterns in the data, either of variability or consistency. Secondly, there is a concern with the function of certain features of the discourse, checking these against the data. Thirdly, there was a concern about how the language used positions people. In this study I used Wetherell et al.‟s (2001b) three key concepts to analyse construction of identity, that is, interpretive repertoires, ideological dilemmas and subject positions. Wetherell et al. (2001b:198) define interpretive repertoires as coherent ways of talking about objects and events in the world. In discourse analytical terms, they are the „building blocks of conversation‟, a range of linguistic resources that can be drawn upon and utilised in the course of everyday social interaction. This implies that interpretive repertoires consist of any community‟s common sense providing a basis for shared understanding. The concept of an interpretative repertoire is important for the analysis because it highlights the cultural history dimension. Wetherell et al. (2001b) recommend that to identify interpretative repertoires one has to be familiar with the data through repeated reading of the transcripts and recognition of patterns across the different people‟s talk or figures of speech.
Wetherell et al. (2001b:199) argue that this becomes a sign that one is getting a feel for the
„discursive terrain‟ that makes up a particular topic or issue.
88 The second analytic concept of analysis is ideological dilemmas. Ideological dilemmas connect to the „lived‟ ideologies according to which members of a culture make sense of the world and events. Wetherell et al. (2001: 210) argue that ideological dilemmas are more than just cultural common sense, and say:
… it alerts us to the possibility that different interpretative repertoires of the „same‟ social object or event do not necessarily arise spontaneously and independently, but are developed together in opposing positions in an unfolding, historical, argumentative exchange.
A similar argument on ideological dilemmas is brought by Billig, Condor, Edwards, Gane, Middleton and Radley (1988), who argue that lived ideologies are not coherent or integrated and are characterised by inconsistency, fragmentation and contradiction. Therefore, lived ideologies or a culture‟s common sense do not provide members of the culture with a clear direction about how they should think and act. Instead, they contain many contrary or competing arguments: in other words they have a dilemmatic character. However, the indeterminacy of lived ideologies makes them rich and flexible resources for social interaction and everyday sense making in the world. In an ideological dilemma two sets of commonly shared values appear to be in rhetorical conflict. In this study I examine the rhetorical nature of the talk. Billig et al. (1988) discuss the way common sense, or ideologies, contains contrary themes which give rise to ideological dilemmas when in opposition to each other. This fits well with the theoretical notion of multiplicity of subject positioning in black identity construction, not all of which are compatible.
The concept of ideological dilemmas is used to analyse the constructions of blackness and ambivalence, focusing on the rhetorical character and tensions in the encounter with whiteness and encounter with racism.
The third analytic concept is subject positions. Wetherell et al. (2001b:210) define subject positions as „locations with conversation‟, identities made relevant by certain ways of talking.
Edley (2001b) gives an account of Louis Althusser‟s influential paper on ideology where he talks about the way that ideology creates or constructs „subjects‟ by drawing people into particular subject positions or identities. Edley (2001b:209) elaborates:
89 Subjectivity …is an ideological effect. The way that people experience and feel about themselves and the world around them is, in part at least he said, a by-product of particular ideological or discursive regimes.
According to Wetherell et al. (2001b:209) ideology constructs subjects by drawing them to particular identities. Furthermore, they use the concept of interpellation and say “interpellation refers to the process of being called or „hailed‟ by a particular discourse”. To be called or hailed by a particular discourse makes a claim that certain stories within an era are more available or appropriate to the society as a means to understand self. This echoes Davies and Harré‟s (1999), argument that discourses create subject positions. The concept of subject positions is used, for example, to analyse the identities of „self‟ and „other‟ that emerge through the discourse in various forms of being black in post-apartheid South Africa.
The three key concepts proposed by Wetherell et al. (2001b) were combined with discourse analytic procedures as put forward by Potter and Wetherell (1987). Potter and Wetherell‟s (1987) guidelines for the analysis of discourse are aimed at providing an account of what people do with the language and discourses they employ. Thus, in analysing the categories of blackness it is important to understand how black people articulate representations of identity in the post- apartheid period. In this regard, Wetherell et al. (2001a:23) say “[o]ne key claim … is that the language positions people – discourse creates subject positions”. This implies that, when people speak, they speak from a position according to their recognised pattern of talk. This primary orientation towards the uses to which language is put prompts a particular method of discourse analysis (Potter & Wetherell, 1987). This method consists of close reading of the interview material and the coding and classification of the collected interview material into themes on an inclusive basis. Once this has been accomplished, a closer examination of the themes should be conducted in order to analyse them in terms of function, variability and construction, as proposed by Potter and Wetherell (1987).
Function refers to the fact that “people do things with their discourse” (Potter & Wetherell, 1988:169) both intentionally (using specific discourses for specific purposes to produce and perpetuate specific understandings and explanations) and unintentionally, in that the use of
90 particular discourses often has wider social and ideological implications (Potter & Wetherell, 1988). However, the process of analysing the function of discourses is not as straightforward as it may at first appear. It is rare, if not indeed non-existent, that individuals hold uniform and unwavering views about a phenomenon across all possible situations or contexts. Discourse can be put to different uses.
Regarding variation Potter and Wetherell (1987:33) claim, “[i]f talk is oriented to many different functions, global and specific, any examination of language over time reveals considerable variation”. Potter and Wetherell (1987:171) claim that variation refers to observation that:
…what people say and write will be different according to what they are doing … as variation is a consequence of function it can be used as an analytic clue to what function is being performed in a particular stretch of discourse.
The third aspect, construction: is used to refer to the manner in which “language is put together, constructed, for the purposes and to achieve particular consequences” (Potter & Wetherell, 1987:171). Using language for particular ends – in order to create specific accounts of reality in differing contexts – necessarily involves the construction of versions, indicated by language variations (Potter & Wetherell, 1987). In this way an analysis of the specific way in which a discourse is constructed, what kind of language is used, when it is used, as well as how and with or by whom, provides clues as to the variation and the function to which it is being put and thus provides a detailed, multifaceted approach to the analysis of the discourse. Through an analysis of the construction we are able to show how already existing linguistic resources are drawn on to inform individual accounts, we can analyse how individuals go about exercising a degree of agency in the construction of their accounts of a phenomenon and we can gain insight into ways in which people orient their talk to do specific things (Potter & Wetherell, 1987)
Interpretive repertoires incorporate patterns of interpretations and explanations that individuals utilise in their construction of their social realities (Potter & Wetherell, 1998). Wetherell and Potter (1988:172) assert that “[r]epertoires can be seen as the building blocks speakers use for constructing versions of actions, cognitive processes and other phenomenon. Any particular
91 repertoire is constituted out of a restricted range of terms used in a specific stylistic and grammatical fashion”. In this study I am interested in the ways of talking about blackness.
Therefore black people making meaning of themselves could be socially constructed. It was also crucial to understand how the socially constructed black identities contribute to making sense of emerging blackness in the changing political era.
A discourse analyst must distance him/herself from the text (Parker, as cited in Terre Blanche &
Durrheim, 1999). Terre Blanche and Durrheim (1999:158) identify „tricks‟ that may assist the researcher in reflecting on textual activities: they say “[b]y identifying what binary oppositions, recurrent terms, phrases and metaphors are present in a text, we begin to see how the text is the product of particular discourses”.
Although I engaged in a detailed reading of each excerpt of text, my task was to examine how the discourses operate in a body of texts. I achieved this by identifying the discourse that the respondents drew on in their way of speaking. Therefore, it was important to read many different texts in order to show variation and consistency in discourse. I paid attention to the process by which blackness has come to be produced by socially and culturally available discourses. Terre Blanche and Durrheim (1999:160) stress that “… everything is part of every-thing else, so that isolating a text from its surroundings is of necessity already to misunderstand it”. The text should be placed in context in order to understand what it is doing.