Discourse analysis: Rich pickings for counsellors and therapists

Abstract

Aim: It is only relatively recently that discourse analysis has begun to rise to prominence in the fields of counselling and psychotherapy. This paper briefly explains ways of understanding discourse analysis, discussing what the approach can offer counselling research and practice. Approach: An initial categorisation of recent discourse analysis studies is offered, to demonstrate diverse ways in which this type of research can address issues relevant to counselling practice. The five categories proposed range from the examination of language use in therapy to analyses that focus on the social structures, meanings and power relations related to therapy. Implications: The paper demonstrates that through the critical analysis of counselling sessions, research interviews, written texts and other materials, discourse analysis can provide insight into ways in which counselling operates as a social practice, and so help counsellors to contextualise their work within broader social structures and processes.

Keywords:

• counselling
• therapy
• psychotherapy
• discourse analysis
• research approaches

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank Anna Evans for her work as research assistant on this paper.

Notes

1. Sometimes conversation analysis is seen as a form of discourse analysis whilst sometimes it is seen as distinct from discourse analysis. Conversation analysis takes a micro-level look at the construction of speech and generally the analysis does not take account of the external context in which the language occurs except in so far as the speakers can shown to orient themselves to that context.

2. Avdi and Georgaca (2007) offer a highly informative critical review of discourse analysis of psychotherapy, and the typology I have adopted has some resemblance to theirs. Their focus, however, is only on discourse analysis of session transcripts: here I take a broader view, considering a range of discourse analysis studies relevant to therapy.