Nieuwenhuis (2007:99) states that “qualitative data analysis tends to be an on-going and iterative (non-liner) process”. This means that in qualitative research, data collection, processing and analysis are intertwined. In qualitative studies, researchers are encouraged and find it crucially significant to go back to the field notes and verify conclusions. They may also be required to verify it from research participants they had researched about. In this vein, data analysis in qualitative studies cannot be treated as a standalone stage. Data analysis in the case of this research started in the field during the process of data collection and continued throughout the process of the study. Below is Figure 2 as adopted from Seidel (1998) cited in Nieuwenhuis (2007:100) illustrating the process of data analysis used:
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Notice things
Think about things Collect things
Figure 2: The data analysis process (adapted from Seidel, 1998)
The figure above illustrates the iterative process of qualitative data analysis developed by Seidel (1998). The figure demonstrates that data analysis process is cyclic in that each stage of research process has a bearing on data analysis. This implies that the researcher has to constantly and consistently refer back to them in the process of analysis. This is supported by Cresswell (1998:142) who states that:
To analyze data the researcher engages in the process of moving in analytical circles rather than using a fixed linear approach. One enters with data of text or images (e.g. photographs, videos) and exits with an account or narrative, in between, the researcher touches on several facts of analysis and circles round and round.
Considering the above, data analysis in this study began during data collection as some themes pertinent to the research questions began popping up. These were recorded on an audio recorder and in a research notebook. The data obtained from this source were later added to the generated knowledge from formal data analysis. As the research involved different data sets, that is, conversations, popular music/videos, print ads and online-based interactions, I began analyzing conversations first. This was necessary considering that conversations permeate different aspects
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of discourse practices. Since conversations (from FGDs) were recorded and ranged between an hour and two hours in length, I first listened to them repeatedly with a view of identifying sections that were more relevant for analysis (see Heigham & Croker 2009). These were then extracted and transcribed for further analysis. This is what Gill (2000) refers to as coding. In this regard, the initial coding may involve going through the transcripts and highlighting or selecting out occasions that are in line with the questions. Therefore, guided by the research objectives, questions and the analytical framework, the initial analysis focused on selecting hybrid discourses used in the conversations and the contexts that determined but not entirely, their use. The second part of analysis, which Gill (2000) refer to as analysis proper focused on how these (hybrid discourses) were being used to negotiate role structures, social identity, and facework (Ting-Toomey 2005). As this was not an easy thing to do, it required a lot of attention and an iterative process to fully understand what was going on. The analysis also entailed paying attention to any emerging themes that were in tandem with the research questions and the literature reviewed. The researcher then applied conversational analysis (CA) in order to identify linguistic patterns or choices that interactants made to negotiate meaning, to enact social identities and relations.
The outlined pattern above was used to analyse other data sets but with a slight nuance toward multimodal discourse analysis. In this case, the second data set to be considered was the music videos/lyrics. The initial stage involved transcribing the lyrics from the videos and observing the interactions of images with words and actions. It was not possible to transcribe the videos except observing the activities of the participants in the videos and how these related to the print text. The idea was to see how these activities were blending with the hybrid discourses to make social meaning. In addition, the point was to identify any global and local intertextual references available. Furthermore, the analysis focused on how identities were being reconstituted or re- constructed in the music videos.
The observed activities were recorded in a research notebook and later interpreted for meaning. This process also entailed a careful and iterative process. The parts that were analysed were those
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that were found relevant to the research questions and the analytical framework used. However, for the sake of a consolidated analysis, I use only three music videos to illustrate the point.
Analyzing the third data set was relatively easy because the corpus was already in the written form and therefore, it did not require to be transcribed down except providing English glosses were localized language forms were used; and, where possible, provide the meanings of English as appropriated in local contexts. The analysis began by reading and re-reading the corpus in order to identify themes and sections that were pertinent to the research (see Bauer & Gaskell 2000). After this was done, extracts of the corpus were taken for further analysis using CA. As pointed out above, the analysis was informed by the objectives and the literature reviewed. Similar aspects that were identified under conversations were also identified in this data set.
The fourth data set included data from interviews. Like in the case of conversations, these were first transcribed from digital recorder and thereafter, coding them, which involved reading and re-reading them to identify themes and relate these to the other findings in other data sets. Since interviews were a complementary source of data to other data, these were closely analysed within the same framework that was used in analyzing the rest.
Data containing advertisements were analysed using MDA. This was done first by identifying the images and relating them to the written text. Thereafter, assign meaning to the multimodal texts within the context of the culture and setting in which they were made and presented. In this regard, the researcher asked questions like: why did the advertiser or music producer use this image; and how does it relate to the other semiosis to make a unified meaning? After arriving at possible meanings of the multimodal texts, the researcher asked questions relating to identity, that is, how are these images and text constructing consumer or more generally social identities? Asking such questions helped to elaborately analyse print ads from an MDA and language as social practice perspective.
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Having identified themes emerging from the study; the researcher applied content analysis. This is a technique for making inferences by systematically and objectively identifying special characteristics of messages or data in general. The technique also involves interpretation. This entails assigning a coherent meaning or significance to something (Newman 2011). This stage was very important as it sought to give meaning or inferences to the knowledge generated in the different data sets. According to Newman (2011), in qualitative studies you give meaning by rearranging, examining and discussing the textual or visual data. This is done in order to convey an authentic voice and in a way, to remain true to the original understanding of the people being studied. In this study, interpretation of the information generated from the different data sets involved a repeated pattern of arranging, examining and discussing the data and in the process looking for meaning and attaching new ones to it. This process was constantly ‘monitored’ by the literature reviewed in chapters two, three and four as well as by the research objectives and questions. In this regard, MDA and CA were useful analytical tools. Additionally, I made interpretations based on my privileged status of a cultural insider of the people I was researching on. However, such interpretation was verified with another insider in order to prevent bias and thus enhance quality. The insiders were essentially two university lecturers who had some background knowledge in general linguistics. Therefore, conclusions were drawn based on such interpretations and literature reviewed.