Poststructuralist approaches to empirical analysis

Abstract

This article develops a range of concrete analytic approaches to empirical studies inspired by poststructuralist thinking. The analytic strategies offered provide examples of "putting deconstruction to work" in the context of the analysis of qualitative data. The discourse-destabilizing impacts are shown by examples derived from the author's own research and that of others. Among the analytic strategies, the author discusses the ways in which constructions of discursive categories and storylines can be investigated. And as a means of sharpening the discourse-transgressing lens, the use of troubling and alienating concepts and models of analysis is explored, together with the use of paradoxes and nonconventional renarrations of data. The approaches are not presented as directly transferable techniques. They are meant to work as inspiration for other researchers in their methodological development of analytic tools.