This four-volume Major Work mines the extensive research of the past few decades into textual analysis. The set's esteemed team of editorshave collated seminal papers which consider the key difference between content analysis and textual analysis, the conceptual starting point and the logic and the attitude of the research process, as well as exploring the tension between reading a text and using a text, amongst other key issues.

With experienced and respected figures in the field at the helm, the carefully selected papers in this collection are put into context and analysed in a newly-written introductory chapter which charts the developments and looks to the future of the field.

Volume One: Basic philosophical considerations

Volume Two: Modalities of textual work

Volume Three: Reading Text

Volume Four: Using Text

Text Analysis – An Introductory Manifesto

MartinW.Bauer, AhmetSüerdem and AudeBicquelet

1. A Working Definition of ‘Text’ for Social Science Analysis

… the discourse on the Text should itself be nothing other than text, research, textual activity, since the Text is that social space which leaves no language safe, outside, nor any subject of the enunciation in position as judge, master, analyst, confessor, decoder. The theory of the Text can coincide only with a practice of writing. (Barthes, 1971)

Selecting the articles for these volumes of SAGE benchmarks on ‘text analysis (TA)’ was no easy task. How to determine the scope of the selection? One could go with a very limited definition of text, such as a canon of official documents or a very broad notion of ‘cultural artefacts’, ...

locked icon

Sign in to access this content

Get a 30 day FREE TRIAL

  • Watch videos from a variety of sources bringing classroom topics to life
  • Read modern, diverse business cases
  • Explore hundreds of books and reference titles