Interpretive Critical Discourse Analysis

Standard CDA often operates within a realist or critical-realist ontology and may claim to reveal the objectively ideological character of a text. Interpretive CDA adopts a constructivist or interpretivist stance, treating meaning as multiple and context-dependent, foregrounding the researcher's positionality as a productive rather than distorting factor, and remaining open to participants' own readings of the texts being analysed.

There is no fixed minimum. Depth matters more than volume: a thorough interpretive CDA of three policy documents may yield richer findings than a surface reading of thirty. The guiding criterion is analytical sufficiency — enough textual material to sustain your interpretive claims and to demonstrate the patterns you identify are not idiosyncratic.

Some grounding in linguistic concepts — such as transitivity, modality, nominalisation, and intertextuality — is important because these are the tools through which ideological work is identified at the textual level. However, highly technical linguistic expertise is not required; what matters most is systematic attention to language choices and their social functions.

Yes. Interpretive CDA pairs naturally with ethnography when you want to relate discursive practices to observed social practices, and with grounded theory when discourse is one component of a broader substantive theory being developed. In such combinations, CDA typically handles the textual analysis while the other method provides contextual or process data.

Rigour rests on transparency: document your text selection rationale, show your working by presenting textual evidence for each analytical claim, engage with alternative interpretations, make your reflexive position explicit, and where possible seek peer debriefing or member-checking with participants whose speech or documents you have analysed.