What are the particular difficulties that researchers face when there are no step by step procedures to follow, yet there is a requirement for the systematic analysis of a dataset?

When having no step by step procedures to follow in the process of discourse analysis, the researchers are facing many difficulties. Discourse analysis mainly focus on language and texts, in which social meanings, social identities and social facts are formed and reproduced (Tonkiss, 2018). Through the discourse analysis, it examines how ideologies are reproduced by language and texts (Fairclough, 1995), and how discourse can be understood in relation to historical processes and events (Wodak, 2011). Hence, in the social and political context, the researchers see language as crucial to the ways that power is reproduced, legitimated and exercised within social relations and institutions (Tonkiss, 2018: 408).

It is challenging in selecting and approaching data. According to different research problems, the source of data collection is also broader. In political and policy discourse, language helps to reproduce and reinforce social power, which can lead to cultural hegemony. For researchers, they need to be sensitive to the different kinds of discourse that are at stake, and they have to be clear about their rationale for choosing certain kinds of data, their strategy for collecting it (Tonkiss, 2018: 411). The abundance and availability of media texts poses a real challenge for the researcher in selecting a manageable amount of relevant data (Tonkiss, 2018). 

The difficulties also appeared in the process of sorting, coding and analyzing data. It presents that data in discourse analysis picks up by doing and perfects by practising. Tonkiss notes that the text also provides a framework on which to consider its inconsistencies, internal workings and small strategies of meaning (Tonkiss, 2018: 412). 

The last possible difficult is happened in presenting the analysis. Internal and external validity is significant to be considered by researchers, referring to the coherence and consistency. Discourse analysis is typically concern with internal validity. They do close textual work to develop arguments on the basis of detailed interpretation of data (Tonkiss, 2018).

Reference

Tonkiss, F. (2018). Discourse Analysis (pp.477-492). In C. Seale (ed.) Researching Society and Culture. London: Sage.