Data Analysis

Publicly accessible documents and statistical data were used in this study to contextualise each university; the institutional documents were used as a means of understanding the practices of each institution, as well as the structural framework and institutional discourse, and so, they were analysed alongside the interviews and observations. Interviews and observations were the main source of data because the central focus of this research was to understand individuals’ perspectives on particular phenomena within a specific context. Interviews allowed me to understand the individual perspectives of both undergraduates and academics, whilst observations allowed me to consider those perspectives in practice (Maxwell, 2012).

The method of CDA used in this study was guided by the Faircloughian three- dimensional model. All data, including the observational data and the drawings from each interviewee, were analysed as a text (analysis of vocabulary and grammar), a discursive practice (interpretation of situational context of text production and intertextuality) and a social practice (explanation of the social determinants influencing the text) (Fairclough, 2015b) (Figure 5.1). The three-dimensional model allowed for a

richer understanding of the relationship between structure and agency and the resulting power relationships, the ways in which new discourses are inculcated into, or rejected from, social structures and the ways in which discourses can frame perceptions and influence subject positioning.

Figure 5.1 The stages of analysis

The data analysis was carried out with a focus on one research question at a time and key parts of the data were selected for analysis. The three-dimensional model was applied to these key parts with a lens to focus on the particular research question being considered. The textual analysis, including vocabulary and grammar, has a large repertoire of possible elements to analyse (see Fairclough, 2015b). CDA as a method, though, is flexible because it recognises that ‘a good method is a method that is able to

give a satisfactory (reliable, relevant, etc.) answer to the questions of a research project’ (Wodak and Meyer, 2015, p.3). Therefore, this study has chosen to only focus

Text Vocabulary: - Wording - Word meaning - Intertextuality Grammar: - Metaphor - Modality and polarity - Cohesion devices - Nominalisations Discursive Practice Interpretation of the situational context of text production and the use of intertextuality and

interdiscursivity, drawing on the representation of other discourses and how they are represented, as well as presuppositions and how they are manifested in the text

Social Practice

Explanation of the social determinants influencing the discourse, including

ideological and political effects of discourse, which are split into three main areas:

- Systems of knowledge and belief

- Social relations - Social identities

(‘selves’) Dialectical relationship between text, discursive practice and social practice

on the aspects of vocabulary and grammar that are noted in Figure 5.1, because I felt they would be the most pertinent in answering my research questions. The data was analysed as a discursive practice once the key vocabulary and grammatical aspects had been established. I interpreted the ways in which the text had made use of other discourses and how these had manifested, whether in terms of context and style or ideational meaning. I also interpreted any presuppositions in the text and where these presuppositions had originated. Once the textual aspects and the discursive practices had been established, I used them to explain the text as a social practice, which included analysing the social determinants that influence the text. The focus of this part of analysis was on considering the ideological and political effects of discourse, namely, systems of knowledge and belief, social relations and social identities and how these manifested in the text being analysed. Explaining the text as a social practice involved making the move back from abstract analysis to the concrete, which is a component of critical realist analysis and will be detailed later. Thus, my analysis continuously referred back to the concrete in order to understand both the abstracted elements of the text and the social processes and determinants, as well as the relationship between them.

Throughout analysis, the interview data was checked against the observational data and the data retrieved from the institutional documents. I did not take what was said in the interviews to be absolute truths, rather I looked for consistencies amongst participants and checked the participants’ responses against the practices in the observations and the institutional documents, and whether there were any consistencies or differentiations between the three data sets. However, this study is concerned with the perspectives of the participants in the first instance, so any notion of truth is subjective and that is important in itself for understanding how participants understand their experiences and

the relationships they negotiate. The theoretical consideration of the relation between structure and agency is apparent in my analysis of the participants’ perspectives. As Sayer notes, ‘beliefs and opinions are […] phenomena which are borne by individuals and yet are socially constituted. Roles and personal identities also generally cannot be determined unilaterally by individuals’ (1992, pp.32–3). As such, when I analysed the interview data, alongside the observational notes and the institutional documents, I was critical of the difference between the participants’ subjective truth and the socially constructed reality in which that truth was determined. In other words, I constantly reflected on the relationship, and subsequent tensions, between structure and agency in the data.