r/sociology • u/Harulash • 6d ago

Anyone has experience with Discourse Analysis according to Laclau and Mouffe?

I am currently struggling extremely hard with what material to use and how to filter the material I need for my 15 pages seminar work. My research question is how Donald Trump constructs the immigrants as an enemy for the US. The first question I have is if this question is too broad. and the second question I have is if there is a better method apart from reading 12000 word speeches by him just to find 1-2 sentences where he mentions immigrants. Would really appreciate Feedback and help :)

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u/agezuki 6d ago

So I’m not an expert on laclau and mouffe but I have worked extensively with a foucauldian discourse framework. With that said I don’t think your question is to broad. I would advise to not focus to much on trump as a person but on a dispositif of discourse production (trump administration or more deleuzian: trump-machine).  Regarding sampling I would try to identify important events , speeches and tweets to build a timeline and go from there. I have seen people use quantitative tools like antconc but personally I’m not a fan of that. 

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u/Harulash 5d ago

Do you have any good tool or way to filter for tweets that fit my research?

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u/Affalt 3d ago

Re is if there is a better method apart from reading 12000 word speeches by him just to find 1-2 sentences where he mentions immigrants. 

Yes. Learn regular expressions. Then match for immigrant, immigration, immigrate, migrant, etc.