Interpretive analysis of spoken discourse: Dealing with the limitations of quantitative and qualitative methods

Quantitative and qualitative methods of analyzing discourse, while producing some pertinent findings, suffer from a number of limitations. Such limitations have become apparent in studies of doctor‐patient communication but also manifest themselves in research on other forms of spoken, interpersonal communication. Quantitative methods alone do not deal with complexities of discourse, usually are not helpful in analyzing the social context in which discourse arises, do not clarify underlying themes and structures, and are costly and tedious to use. With qualitative methods, the selection of discourse for analysis is not straightforward, quality of interpretation is difficult to evaluate, and textual presentation is not clear‐cut. Several criteria of an appropriate method offer reasonable compromises in dealing with these limitations: a) discourse should be selected through a sampling procedure, preferably a randomized technique; b) recordings of sampled discourse should be available for review by other obs...