title: The interplay of text, meaning and practice: methodological considerations on discourse analysis in medical education.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  The study of discourses (i.e. verbal interactions or written accounts) is increasingly used in social sciences to gain insight into issues connected to discourse, such as meanings, behaviours and actions. This paper situates discourse analysis in medical education, based on a framework developed in organisational discourse analysis and widely deployed in other social science disciplines.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  This paper aims to examine the constructs of 'discourse' and 'discourse analysis', and how various understandings of discourse and discourse analysis may play out in empirical and analytical settings, with a particular focus on the field of medical education.
  
  
  METHODS
  The study is based on a literature analysis of discourse analysis approaches published in Medical Education.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Findings suggest that empirical studies through discourse analysis can be heuristically understood in terms of the links between text, practices and meaning.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Discourse analysis provides a more strongly supported argument when it is possible to defend claims on three levels: practice, using observational data; meaning, using ethnographic data, and text, using conversational and textual data.
authors.affiliation: Department of Intercultural Communication and Management, Copenhagen Business School, Frederiksberg, Denmark.|Department of School of Management, Faculty of Royal Holloway, Royal Holloway University of London, London, UK.
authors.forename: Dan
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Kärreman
authors.affiliation: Department of Business Administration, University of Lund, Lund, Sweden.
authors.forename: Charlotta
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Levay
mesh_terms: D003142:Communication; D004501:Education, Medical; D006801:Humans; D012107:Research Design; D012942:Social Sciences