Introduction: Partiality and reflexivity

This chapter describes the concept of the qualitative/quantitative relationship which underpins so much discussion of the combination of corpus & discourse analysis and the different kinds of partiality that may affect the direction and interpretation of research. Blind spots refer to the aspects that remain necessarily undetected or under-analysed in research that tackles complex communicative events when limiting itself to text-only corpora, to corpora of just one text type or to just corpora at large. Dissonance, far from being daunting, holds great creative potential, as it 'suggests areas for further analysis' and ultimately is a barometer of complexity of the topic/research questions. Mixing methods is a form of triangulation and all forms of triangulation hold creative power, because they allow the researcher to look onto the data from many different windows, they account for complexity and help dealing with it. The chapter also presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book.