Paper Short Abstract:

Anthropological research requires long-term participant observation and learning the language (in a broader sense) of the studied social group. I introduce a new method that integrates quantitative methods with qualitative interpretation, using cognitive semantics, network- and discourse analysis.

Paper Abstract:

Anthropological research relies on long-term participant observation and the first imperative is to learn the language (in a broader sense) of the studied social group. I introduce a new method that integrates quantitative methods into qualitative interpretation, combining cognitive semantics, network theory, and discourse analysis with interpretative anthropology. Standing on the shoulders of giants of these fields, my new method is not an overwriting or unwriting of the former schools and methods, but rather a synthesis of those results that can be useful for some (and not any) research questions. Any methodological considerations must be conciliated with the questions we seek answers for since there is no omnipotent theoretical and methodological frame for the social sciences. In my paper, I will introduce the anthropological discourse analysis (ADA) method that I have developed during the last decade, based on theorists and scholars who are seemingly in distant fields: Evens-Pritchard, Manuel Castells, Mark Granovetter, Pierre Bourdieu, Dell Hymes, Clifford Geerts, Michel Foucault, Teun van Dijk, Norman Fairclough, Leonard Primiano, Ann Mische, Harrison White, Stanley Fish, Albert-László Barabási and many others. I demonstrate in some examples how it can be applied, and which kind of answers we can get using this new methodological tool. My examples are from the scene of the contemporary Hungarian new religious movements that I have studied for the last sixteen years. I also explain which research question can be more adequately answered and what kinds of trends can be recognized with this method in the study of religions.