Discourse Tracing as Qualitative Practice

Abstract

This article introduces a qualitative research method called discourse tracing. Discourse tracing draws from contributions made by ethnographers, discourse critics, case study scholars, and process tracers. The approach offers new insights and an attendant language about how we engage in research designed specifically for the critical-interpretive and applied analysis of discourse. More specifically, discourse tracing analyzes the formation, interpretation, and appropriation of discursive practices across micro, meso, and macro levels. In doing so, the method provides a language for studying social processes, including the facilitation of change and the institution of new routines. The article describes the current theoretical and political landscape of qualitative methods and how discourse tracing can provide a particularly helpful methodological tool at this time. Then, drawing from a qualitative study on of school lunch policy, the authors explain how to practice discourse tracing in a step-by-step manner.

Familiness as a form of value for wineries: a preliminary account

“…'generation'), which was then inductively coded to identify the specific themes around which references to family were clustered. As in related research on the construction of authenticity at Scottish whisky distilleries (Spracklen, 2011, following LeGreco andTracy, 2009), we 'trace' the articulation of familiness along these different levels of text and talk, in order to identify the most common markers or anchors of familiness as they occur through the brand narrative, as accomplished by the brand representative, in the physical site, and in the promotional material.…”

‘Mine’s a Pint of Bitter’: Performativity, gender, class and representations of authenticity in real-ale tourism

“…We also interviewed senior individuals at a representative sample of three breweries in the north: an established, traditional family brewer; a survivor from the 1980s revival; and a new brewer established this century. We used Discourse Tracing (LeGreco and Tracy, 2009) to analyse the data. All data and analysis has been anonymised through the use of appropriate pseudonyms for the festival, individual respondents and the three breweries in the sample, though we have kept the names of real beers and breweries referred to by sources and in the field notes.…”

From serious leisure to serious work, or, when folk music struck a chord: careers, Habermasian rationality and agency

“…We analysed the data using a combination of grounded theory (Glaser and Strauss, 1967) and discourse tracing (LeGreco & Tracy, 2009). Discourse tracing is an analytical method that uses a continuous reading of texts and transcripts, moving between the theoretical framework and the data to slowly develop an understanding of the key discourses common to the data.…”