Analyzing Verbal Data: Principles, Methods, and Problems

Abstract

This chapter formulates the issues and choices researchers should be aware of when adopting or adapting various methods of analyzing verbal data such as transcripts of classroom discourse and small group dialogues, talk-aloud protocols from reasoning and problem solving tasks, students' written work, textbook passages and test items, and curriculum documents. It discusses the basic principles of linguistically precise discourse analysis including transcription, the role of context, and intertextuality. Semantic content analysis (thematics), rhetorical-interactional analysis (e.g., speech act theory), and structural-textural analysis (segmentation and cohesion) are distinguished as complementary procedures. Finally, problems of generalizability, interpretation, and cultural bias are briefly addressed, along with a note on extensions of the methods to multimedia and video.