Employing a form of critical realist discourse analysis for identity research: an example from women’s talk of motherhood, childcare and employment

This chapter outlines a method which presents a starting point for researchers conducting critical realist discursive work in order to to have a dialogue between discourse and embodiment, materiality, or social structures. The aim is to be able to offer a method of making sense of people’s accounts that includes a wide range of factors including both the discursive and ‘extra’ discursive. This is done through a layered synthesized form of critical realist discourse analysis. The methodology is operationalized in three phases; firstly, common sense and wider discourses, as well as embodied, material, and social structures are identified. Secondly, the chapter focuses on the development of quantitative and qualitative ways of measuring these factors in the participants’ lives. The final phase involves an analysis of participants’ accounts using discursive psychology, a social constructionist analysis of the discourses participants draw upon, and a critical realist analysis of material, embodied, and institutional factors.