# Frame Methodology Pack -- Discourse-Analytic (`discourse_analytic`)

**Source anchor:** Foucault, *Archaeology of Knowledge* (1969); Fairclough, *Critical Discourse Analysis* (1995); Potter & Wetherell, *Discourse and Social Psychology* (1987); Wetherell (1998) on positioning and repertoires.
**Status:** Public-Evaluator. Loaded by Frame Host E3; readable by E2, E4, E5, E8, E9.

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## 1. Methodology

Foucault's *Archaeology of Knowledge* treats research outputs as **statements (énoncés)** positioned within **discursive formations** governed by rules of rarity, authority, and institutional conditions of production. A discursive formation determines what can be said, by whom, under what conditions, and what subject positions the statement constitutes. Audit asks: what discursive formation authorizes this claim? What statements are excluded from utterability? What subject positions does the claim constitute for researcher, participant, and object of study?

Fairclough's **three-dimensional CDA** structures the analysis at three levels: the text itself (linguistic features), the discourse practice (production, distribution, consumption), and the broader sociocultural practice (institutional and power conditions). Potter & Wetherell add **interpretative repertoires** and **variability analysis**: talk and text are not neutral windows onto cognition or fact but are organized around relatively stable repertoires whose variation across occurrences is itself analyzable.

A discourse-analytic audit asks: does the RAM claim treat language as transparent, or does it recognize its own discursive constitution? What interpretative repertoires organize the claim? What variability across talk/text samples would complicate or confirm it?

## 2. Claim Types Best-Audited

- Framing, positioning, and presupposition claims.
- Claims where the category itself is a discursive construct (e.g., "at-risk," "consumer," "radicalized").
- Claims whose data are talk or text (interview, focus-group, policy document, media corpus).
- Claims about how authority, expertise, or legitimacy is produced in a domain.

## 3. Typical Weaknesses

- Weak on non-linguistic causal mechanisms -- the frame addresses discursive constitution, not physical process.
- Infinite regress risk: every statement of discourse analysis is itself a statement in a discursive formation. The frame can fail to arrest this movement usefully.
- Foucault's method resists operationalization; applications often blur archaeological-genealogical distinctions.
- Interpretative-repertoire identification can slide into auditor-imposed thematic coding unless variability analysis is disciplined.

## 4. Compatibility Profile (Three Kuhnian Dimensions)

- **Methodological signature:** archaeological / CDA. Inquiry surfaces discursive formation rules, three-dimensional text-practice-sociocultural analysis, and interpretative-repertoire variability.
- **Semantic signature:** discourse-constituted. Meaning is an effect of discursive formation, not a property of utterance-content alone.
- **Ontological signature:** positions and formations. What there is (in the claim's domain) is subject positions, statements, and the formations that authorize them.

DISTINCT against all three RAM frames: S02 grades evidence by epistemic hierarchy outside the discursive register; S03 locates mechanisms in stratified reality prior to their discursive articulation; S08 measures informational redundancy by sample statistics, not by repertoire variability.

## 5. Retrieval Hook

- **Corpora:** discursive formation maps; CDA case studies (Fairclough lineage); interpretative-repertoire analyses (Potter-Wetherell lineage); statement (énoncé) inventories; positioning-analysis studies.
- **Query style:** pair the claim with the subject positions it constitutes and the statements it excludes; seek variability analysis across multiple talk/text occurrences of the claim's category.
- **Exclusion rules:** claims that treat language as transparent window onto fact; single-occurrence talk/text treated as representative without variability analysis.

## 6. Scoring Hook

- **axis_warrant:** discursive-formation specification. Has the formation (rules of rarity, authority, institutional conditions) that authorizes the claim been made explicit?
- **axis_fit:** subject-position and exclusion mapping. Are the positions the claim constitutes identified, and are the statements the formation excludes surfaced?
- **axis_robustness:** variability analysis. Does the claim hold across multiple talk/text occurrences, or does variability fracture it into repertoire-relative fragments?
- **aggregation_rule:** `non_collapse` (architectural lock).

## 7. Termination Hook

- **rule_id:** `repertoire_saturation`.
- **minimum_artifacts:** talk/text samples across at least 4 non-redundant occurrence contexts, with variability analysis applied.
- **closure_test:** no new interpretative repertoire surfaces across additional talk/text samples; discursive formation rules are stable; further samples elaborate rather than invert.

## 8. Authors Cited

Foucault, Fairclough, Potter, Wetherell. No overlap with authors reserved for RAM S02 (Guyatt, Sterne, Hammersley), RAM S03 (Pawson, Tilley, Shadish, Cook, Campbell), or RAM S08 (Glaser, Saunders, Guest, Callaghan).
