Textual Research Methods refer to specific methods focused on analyzing texts, including

1. Citation Analysis
2. Genre Analysis
3. Literary Criticism
   1. Critical Disability Studies
   2. Critical Race Theory – Beyond Myths: What the Debate Misses
   3. Feminist Criticism
   4. LGBTQ + Criticism
   5. Marxist Criticism
   6. New Historicist Criticism
   7. Post-Colonial Criticism
   8. Post-Structuralist, Deconstructive Criticism
   9. Psychological Criticism
   10. Reader-Response Criticism
   11. Russian Formalism and New Criticism
   12. Structuralist Criticism
4. Rhetorical Analysis
   • Rhetorical Analysis of Film
   • Rhetorical Analysis of Images
   • Rhetorical Analysis in the Real World: A Useful Thinking Tool
5. Textual Analysis

Here, it is important to note that in present-day discourse, the term text may refer to

1. A work of art:
   • A text can be an artistic creation, a carefully curated tapestry of words and ideas that tells a story, shares knowledge, or provokes thought.
2. A signifier:
   • A composition serves as a conduit for thought. Thought finds shape in language as writers associate thought with  and concrete signs – words, sentences, paragraphs – that can be read and understood by others.
3. A socio-cultural-historical artifact:
   • A text is not created in a vacuum. It is influenced by the writer’s social and cultural background, their personal experiences, and the historical context in which it is created. This dynamic, networked nature makes each composition a unique reflection of its time and place.

Scholars use textual research methods—hermeneutics—to develop truth claims and assess the veracity of those claims. They believe that knowledge is created through sustained debate and dialogue—the never-ending, ongoing conversation of humankind. Scholars accomplish this by:

1. Defining and interpreting canonical texts, ideas, and theories within their field: Scholars identify key texts and theories that form the foundation of their discipline, examining how these works have shaped and continue to influence the field.
2. Closely reading and critically analyzing these texts: Through rhetorical reasoning and rhetorical analysis, scholars uncover deeper meanings, question assumptions, and explore the nuances of foundational texts.
3. Debating different interpretations and perspectives on the meaning and significance of the texts: Scholarly discourse involves lively debates and discussions where scholars present and defend their interpretations, often challenging and refining each other’s views.
4. Contributing new writings, research, and insights that build upon, challenge, or reframe existing scholarly work: Scholars create meaning by writing texts and looking inward to the power of logic and rational thinking. They depend on dialectic—the process of reasoning correctly—to generate, test, and defend the knowledge they produce. By producing original research and theoretical insights, they push the boundaries of current understanding.

Because scholars emphasize debate and dialogic interpretation, they see knowledge as provisional and ongoing. No final “truth” is established; rather, meaning continually evolves through critical discourse.

Scholarship is fundamentally rooted in what has been called “the conversation of humankind”—the ongoing, centuries-long dialogue where each new scholarly work responds to what came before and anticipates future contributions. In this conversation, scholars don’t merely consume knowledge but actively engage with it, challenge it, and transform it. Each scholarly text becomes both a response to previous voices and an invitation for new ones to join the dialogue.

Typical genres of textual research include academic articles, literary criticism, historical analysis, philosophical treatises, cultural critique, theoretical frameworks, annotated bibliographies, literature reviews, and interpretive essays. These genres reflect the scholar’s focus on creating meaning through textual engagement.

What Are Textual Research Methods?

Epistemologies Informing Scholarly Methods

Scholarly methods are grounded in several key epistemological frameworks that shape how scholars understand the nature of knowledge and its creation:

1. Hermeneutics: This perspective centers on interpreting texts (broadly defined to include cultural artifacts, films, maps, etc.). It views knowledge as developing through an ongoing process of reading, writing, and scholarly debate. Hermeneutics is perhaps the most fundamental epistemology for textual research, informing approaches from literary criticism to theological exegesis.
2. Dialogism: This framework holds that meaning is created through the interaction of multiple voices or perspectives. It emphasizes the relational exchange of ideas rather than a single authoritative source. Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of dialogism has been particularly influential in understanding how texts speak to one another across time and space.
3. Rationalism: This perspective holds that reason and intellectual discourse are primary sources of knowledge, sometimes independent of sensory input. It often aligns with hermeneutics and dialectical debate as core methods. Scholarly methods frequently employ rational argument and logical analysis.
4. Constructivism: This viewpoint posits that individuals (or groups) actively construct knowledge rather than simply absorb it. It stresses the role of social interaction, context, and engagement with the environment in building meaning. Many contemporary scholarly approaches acknowledge the constructed nature of knowledge.
5. Interpretivism: Closely linked to subjectivism, this framework maintains that knowledge is constructed through social and cultural contexts, with multiple, equally valid interpretations. It acknowledges that scholars bring their own perspectives to texts.
6. Subjectivism: This perspective asserts that knowledge and reality are fundamentally shaped by individual perceptions and interpretations, denying a strictly mind-independent reality. While pure subjectivism is rare in scholarship, the recognition of subjective elements in interpretation is widespread.

These epistemologies interact and overlap in scholarly practice, often informing different methodological approaches within the broader umbrella of textual research.

The Scholar’s Approach

Scholars focus on texts and dialectic—the process of reasoning correctly—to generate, test, and defend the knowledge they produce. Unlike scientists, engineers, or social scientists who often look outward for evidence, scholars primarily look inward, relying on critical interpretation, logic, and rational thinking.

Contemporary scholars may be called critics, historians, philosophers, or theorists. For them, anything that can be read or analyzed is a text, including movies, stock tickers, maps, etc. Scholars address topics that emerge from their everyday experiences as members of a culture, and they often read texts from particular theoretical perspectives, such as Capitalism, Marxism, Psychoanalysis, Behaviorism, Deconstruction, Modernism, and Postmodernism.

Disciplinary Approaches to Textual Research

There are many different ways to conduct textual research. Academic disciplines and professions have unique approaches to engaging in textual research:

• Lawyers may engage in textual research by surveying applicable laws, policies, and precedents
• Clinical psychologists might read peer-reviewed research on personality constructs
• Theologians and religious scholars interpret holy texts through various hermeneutical traditions

Thus, it’s helpful to think of textual research as a suite of practices, a range of options, that are deployed based on the rhetorical situation.

Scholarly Methods and Knowledge Creation

Scholars accomplish their work by:

1. Defining and interpreting canonical texts, ideas, and theories within their field
2. Closely reading and critically analyzing these texts through rhetorical reasoning
3. Debating different interpretations and perspectives on the meaning and significance of the texts
4. Contributing new writings, research, and insights that build upon, challenge, or reframe existing scholarly work

Scholarly knowledge is inherently provisional and subject to further debate and reinterpretation. The goal is not to uncover absolute facts, but to participate in the hermeneutical process of collectively defining, questioning, and refining our understanding through ongoing scholarly dialogue.

Primary vs. Secondary Texts

Some researchers, particularly archivists, make a distinction between primary and secondary texts:

• Primary Texts: A primary text is an original text by an author, such as a memoir, autobiography, or journal.
• Secondary Texts A secondary text is a text that summarizes, paraphrases and cites other texts. Examples of secondary texts are journal articles, reports, or proposals.

Hermeneutics and the Hermeneutic Circle

Textual Research Methods are informed by hermeneutics, a philosophy of interpretation and understanding, and the concept of a hermeneutic circle—the idea that interpretation is an integrative, reiterative process informed by:

• Multiple readings/interpretations
• Readings change over time in response to the idiosyncrasies of readers, changes in culture and media
• The historical context of the document
• The author’s and reader’s relationship to the historical context

Methods Scholars Use to Generate Knowledge

Scholarly inquiry requires patience, curiosity, and determination. It’s a challenging and rewarding endeavor that involves several key approaches:

1. Dialectic: The process of reasoning correctly derives its authority from the deliberate confrontation of opposing views. Scholars are engaged in an endless “great debate,” a cycle of interpretation, critique, and reinterpretation. In this dialectic system, no idea is unassailable and nothing is ever settled once and for all.
2. Research: Scholars conduct strategic research to explore new areas of study, uncover new information, or verify existing knowledge. This is essentially text-based inquiry that may involve analysis of existing literature.
3. Analysis: Scholars analyze existing data or information to draw new insights or conclusions.
4. Synthesis: Scholars synthesize information from multiple sources to create new ideas or frameworks, comparing different theories, identifying patterns, or developing new conceptual models. They often apply critical, political, or social theories to interpret events or ideas.
5. Collaboration: Scholars frequently collaborate to share data, ideas, resources, or work together on research projects.
6. Critical thinking: Scholars evaluate existing knowledge by questioning assumptions, challenging established theories, or identifying gaps in the literature. They critique sources using frameworks like the CRAAP Test (Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy, Purpose).
7. Citation: Scholars attribute sources using the citation style appropriate to their field—such as MLA or APA.

Textual Research in Educational Settings

Formal textual research methods are taught in high school, college, and professional workplace settings. At a minimum, teachers in school settings train students to write with sources (summarizing, paraphrasing, and quoting). Masters and doctoral programs provide discipline-specific training in research methods.

To help develop competencies as textual researchers, teachers ask students to:

• Read/analyze texts to learn about existing knowledge, research questions, and information
• Speculate and engage in reasoned debate with others about texts and interpretations
• Share subjective readings of others’ texts (reader response)
• Explore how interpretations are historically and culturally situated
• Engage in intertextual analysis—e.g., analyze how thinking about a particular topic evolves over time
• Use theory (e.g., Marxism, gender studies, critical race theory) to inform interpretations
• Develop knowledge claims by composing in response to other texts

Major Approaches in Scholarly Textual Research

This article serves as an introduction to a broader encyclopedia section on scholarship that includes numerous specialized approaches:

Literary Criticism

Various schools of Literary Criticism offer different lenses for textual interpretation:

• Critical Disability Studies
• Critical Race Theory – Beyond Myths: What the Debate Misses
• Feminist Criticism
• LGBTQ + Criticism
• Marxist Criticism
• New Historicist Criticism
• Post-Colonial Criticism
• Post-Structuralist, Deconstructive Criticism
• Psychological Criticism
• Reader-Response Criticism
• Russian Formalism and New Criticism
• Structuralist Criticism

Rhetorical Analysis

The examination of how texts persuade through language and symbols:

• Rhetorical Analysis of Film
• Rhetorical Analysis of Images
• Rhetorical Analysis in the Real World: A Useful Thinking Tool

Additional Approaches

The encyclopedia will be expanded to include:

• Genre Analysis
• Methodological Analysis
• Citation Analysis

Related Concepts and Competencies

Textual Research Methods are informed by and related to several other important competencies:

1. Information Literacy: Your perspective and ability to interpret texts is shaped by your ability to locate, read, and assess texts. Information literacy recognizes scholarship as a conversation.
2. Mindset: Effective textual research requires:
   • Growth Mindset: Curiosity and openness to new information
   • Intellectual Openness: Willingness to consider opposing viewpoints
   • Metacognition & Self-Regulation: Self-awareness during the research process
   • Professionalism & Work Ethic: The persistence necessary to do thorough work
   • Resilience: Ability to adjust when discovering new contradictory information
3. Writing with Sources: Mastery of conventions governing attribution, including summarizing, paraphrasing, and citing secondary sources.
4. Rhetorical Reasoning: Especially logos, reasoning, rhetorical stance, and rhetorical knowledge.
5. Flow: Integrating textual evidence through quotes, paraphrases, and summaries.

Textual Research and Empirical Methods

Textual Research Methods may function as a standalone research approach or complement other methodologies:

• As a standalone approach: An author may use solely textual methods to develop a text (e.g., reviewing publications for an annotated bibliography or writing literary criticism)
• As a complementary approach: An author may rely primarily on empirical methods (qualitative and quantitative research) and conduct textual research only during early stages when defining research questions and methods

While scholarly methods typically form the foundation of most research studies across disciplines, it’s important to recognize that textual research can be a separate and complete methodology in itself. Researchers from various methodological communities may begin projects by engaging in systematic literature reviews, but scholars specifically create meaning primarily through reading, writing, and critiquing texts, rather than through empirical observation.

Comparing Scholarly Methods with Scientific Approaches

Unlike methodologies informed by positivism, scholars lack a way to definitively prove or disprove their positions. Ultimately, scholars are more concerned with participating in the great debate, the scholarly exchange of ideas, as opposed to presuming that truth will one day be found so the debate will need to come to an end. Scholars make meaning by discussing texts and by applying theories to create new readings of texts.

This contrasts with scientific approaches that seek to establish verifiable facts through empirical testing and replication. While scientists aim to narrow possibilities toward definitive answers, scholars often expand possibilities through multiple interpretations and ongoing discourse.