Navigating the financial frontier

Discourse analysis has been criticised for being overtly biased in as much as it cherry-picks the linguistic features it seeks to examine within a dataset. However, with the aid of Corpus Linguistics, it becomes possible to interrogate large corpora, extracting hundreds or thousands of text samples for analysis. Integrating qualitative and quantitative analyses within what is now called corpus-assisted discourse study approach is a conscious decision in response to a long-standing debate across many disciplines regarding the compatibility or otherwise of quantitative and qualitative methods. This study aims to unfold a strategic synergy, providing an unbiased methodological procedure for a corporative integration between the two analyses and an objective pathway for qualitative and quantitative analyses. The triangulation of findings can (1) answer criticism directed to corpus linguistics and discourse analysis when applied separately, (2) help researchers build socio-cultural knowledge on their corpora by consulting other sources of information on their topic under examination and (3) determine what contribution corpus-assisted discourse study approach can make to the study of complex social issues. An additional value of this work is that the five stages can be applied to different subjects and corpora