The Plasticity of Discourse Analysis for Social Science Research

Abstract

This chapter argues that discourse analysis in its most varied approaches and methods is a reliable tool to research in a wide range of topics within the social sciences due to its flexibility, efficiency and productiveness in its outcomes. This is why I draw on the centrality of discourse in the constitutive relations between language in action and the construction and negotiation of identities. I illustrate this claim by presenting outcomes of two decades of research activity on racism and discrimination against Mapuche people in Chileans’ everyday discourse and their psychosocial effects on Mapuche individuals approached through critical discourse analysis, the discursive construction of ethnic identity in Mapuche adolescents in Chile dealt through discursive psychology and conversational analysis and finally Mapuche ethnic identity and culturally recreated places in Santiago studied through socio-interactional narrative approach.