Combining Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches to Discourse Analysis: in conversation with Alan Partington and Gerlinde Mautner

The essay contains an interview to Gerlinde Mautner (WU − Vienna University) and Alan Partington (University of Bologna) given during the 2016 Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis Across Disciplines (CADAAD) International Conference. The aim of the contribution is to critically discuss contemporary issues linked to the qualitative and quantitative approaches divide in linguistic research. These two notions are strickly connected and related to the broader category of the social imaginary since they are both a construct but also help shape academic research. Therefore, the following interview will tackle these issues in linguistic research and raise several questions concerning what both Corpus Linguistics and Discourse Analysis are but also about the nature of language analysis itself and, more specifically, the role of quantitative and qualitative analyses in linguistics.