![]()
Part I
Foundations
Researching texts
Aim: Part I will help you develop the research skills that are fundamental to the academic work of text analysis.
CONTENTS: PART I
1 Your materials
2 Gathering more materials
3 Sizing up the job: questions, scope and focus
4 The right tools for the job: research methods
5 Preparing the ground: reading and note-making skills
6 Analysing
7 Reporting: writing about texts
Review your skills
Commentaries for Part I
![]()
CHAPTER 1
Your materials
Developing a spirit of enquiry starts in your own location. Research is not necessarily about leaving familiar territory – some of the best work is done on home soil. At the core of all good research is the ability to stand back from what is known and see it afresh. This can be done in any context, familiar or not.
However, standing back from language is never easy, because it seems so natural to us. The activities that follow are designed to get you looking at yourself anew – as the source of some good language materials.
Activity 1.1
A LANGUAGE INVENTORY
Answer the questions below, making an inventory as you go. At the end of this process, you will have a profile of yourself as a resource for ongoing text analysis.
1.1 YOUR OWN LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT
Make a list of any material you have, or have access to, that relates to your younger self. For example:
Early reading books | Teachers’ reports | Diaries |
Old comics and magazines | School exercise books | Games |
Greetings cards | Collections, eg football cards, cards about toys | |
Recordings of yourself | Letters, eg to a penpal | |
Examples of your digital communication, eg emails, SMSs, social media posts.
1.2 YOUR FAMILY AND FRIENDS
Make a list of any people in your immediate social circle who are interesting or intriguing from a language point of view. For example:
Do you have younger relatives or friends who are themselves using or producing any of the material above?
Do you have any relatives or friends in occupations that use a specific type of language?
Do you have any older relatives or friends who have kept material from years ago – for example, sports articles, greetings cards etc.?
Do you have friends from different communities who use language in distinctive ways?
1.3 YOU NOW…
Do you belong to any groups or take part in any activities that have their own forms of language?
Do you do any work that involves you in using language in a certain way?
Do you collect, read and/or write particular sorts of material?
Individuals are said to have their own ‘idiolect’, or set of linguistic fingerprints that are uniquely their own. Give some examples of language habits or expressions that characterise your idiolect.
1.4 …AND YOUR ATTITUDES
Everyone has an attitude to some aspect of language or another. What are some of your pet loves and hates about language? What are some of the things that make you laugh, think, feel confused, cry? Read the list below, and add any further items that you feel strongly about:
The way people speak on mobile phones
Language and stereotyping
Occupational language – e.g. legal language, scientific language
The way people communicate online – e.g. in blogs, on Twitter, on social media
Language and ‘political correctness’
Terms of address – e.g. words used to women
Personal ads – e.g. the language of internet dating sites
The language of some rituals – e.g. weddings, funerals
Language use in some specific contexts – e.g. at the hairdresser’s, at the dentist’s
Communication with animals – e.g. the way people speak to their dogs
Conversations between strangers at bus stops or on trains
The language of junk mail
The language of some magazines
Certain types of literature
The language of birth announcements or obituaries
Some new words and expressions
Particular
accents, dialects or languages
When you feel you have exhausted all the topics here, write a summary for yourself of all the different language resources you could tap into, and all the different language areas that provoke a reaction in you.
Your summary is, in effect, a description of you as a language resource. It shows some possible sources of texts, and it also shows some areas where doing research could be rewarding for you. Research questions that arise from something you find personally affecting – whether that’s pleasurable, or annoying – can be powerful because you care.
This completes the first layer of your toolkit.
![]()
CHAPTER 2
Gathering more materials
Simply sticking with your existing resources will not give you a way to develop further. You need to plan for how you will go about collecting new sources of language use.
Here are some ways you can add to your raw materials:
2.1 RECORDING
Keep a note of interesting examples of language use that you see and/or hear as you go about your everyday life. There are times when we all wish we had had a way to record a conversation that unfolds near us, perhaps on a bus or in the street. However, even if the conversation itself proves elusive, it is still possible to record some elements of it in a notebook or notemaking tool on a phone or other device. Try to make a note of what it was that you found so interesting.
Of course, recording sound and/or video has become far easier with mobile digital technologies, and there are many examples of undercover recordings that are made by investigative journalists attempting to expose what they see as corruption or bad behaviour of some kind. However, academic research ethics also warn us against doing anything which causes harm to individuals during the process of research, particularly if those individuals are vulnerable – for example, if they are very young, elderly and infirm, mentally ill, or powerless in some way. Ideally, if you want to record people in conversation, you should ask the permission of the speakers. However, researchers recognise that the very act of doing this can alter what would otherwise occur naturally, for example by people saying what they think you want to hear, or by being on their best behaviour. This idea of the researcher affecting the results of their own research is called the observer’s paradox...
