O discurso na pesquisa qualitativa – perspetivas analíticas

Abstract

This text was originally constructed to support the preparation of a thesis that analyzed the discourses of political actors linked to the healthcare sector, revealing breaks with the constitutional measures related to the right to healthcare, the responsibility of the state and the discourse of political subjects concerning healthcare in Brazil. At the time, considering doubts about the form of working with the documents, and faced with various references about document analysis, a text was prepared to review the central arguments of key authors about the theme. Later, a more in-depth version of the original document was prepared through work in the class on research. This paper sought to assist students and researchers who were constantly confronting the need to define methodological procedures for document analysis. The paper reviews the concept of discourse, its construction as an analytical category and the form it is grasped by contemporary sociology. It also presents the central ideas of leading authors such as Umberto Eco, Michel Foucault and Marilena Chauí. It then discusses content analysis and discourse analysis. Its addresses their uses in the social sciences, reviews their history and the alterations made as they are appropriated by various disciplines such as linguistics, history and semiotics. In conclusion, it identifies how social thinking today has a clear connection with what was often generically called discourse analysis, hich was used in various disciplines, not always with the same perspective or framing. Discourse analysis has been treated either as an interdisciplinary field, as a theoretical-methodological perspective or as a technique for the analysis of discourses.