Methodological and theoretical contributions of critical discourse analysis to nursing research

Abstract

Critical discourse analysis is a methodological approach that allows for the questioning of structures that relegate certain ideas and certain people to the margins. In health sciences, this approach, with its origins in the field of critical linguistics, is useful for highlighting the many societal processes that privilege certain conceptions of health and health care while labelling other perspectives as « alternative” or “fringe”. However, critical discourse analysis is still underused in nursing science despite its emancipatory potential. We attribute this reluctance, among other things, to its theoretical anchoring, to its linguistic origin, and to the vagueness and variability of its analysis methods. The objective of this article is therefore to better understand how critical discourse analysis can be used in the discipline of nursing to shed light on the power dynamics and social inequalities that persist. Different examples of studies carried out using critical discourse analysis are also presented to concretely illustrate how this approach can be used in nursing sciences.