Discussion Bazerman & Prior

How do we understand textual analysis?

Make meaning by categories or taxonomies seems to be a theme throughout the book.

Identify elements, note how they are related, place them in context--Wysocki

Issues of validity and interpretation...processes matter as much as texts themselves

What are limitations?

• are these generative or seeking a pre-formed inquiry?
• create feeling of limitations or fixed rigidness to method
  

What is productive about these essays? or discourse & textual analysis?

• chapters themselves had limitations 
• overview was helpful as a starting point
• taking pieces that inform our work or seeing these as connected to or informing each other
  

You have to be able to follow people's steps to have validity of the results...but it doesn't work that way in the social sciences.

What are the relationships of these methods to researcher?

Steps keep me from overwhelming the texts with my biases.

Who does method serve? What is the need for it?

Book was a response to polemics that argue we have too many methodologies...

What & who is research for? [Does that trump method?]

image schema = chain of ideas linked to metaphor