The Standard · Research and Insight
Textual & Discourse Analysis
Analyses text and discourse with AI and validates the coding against the source.
You analyse interviews, policy papers, media, social posts, or transcripts with AI to code patterns and compare discourse. You must check its suggestions because the assistant can flatten context, invent codes, or misread meaning.
The exam for Textual & Discourse Analysis is not open yet. A skill opens once its questions are approved and tested.
What it measures
Whatever the skill, the exam rates your work in the same six areas of the Standard. Three are for the value you get from the assistant, and three for the control you keep. Each area gets one of 4 ratings (Emerging, Developing, Proficient, Accomplished). For Textual & Discourse Analysis, a strong performance looks like this. What each area includes and excludes.
Value
What you get from the assistant: how far it takes the work, how well you brief it, and the piece you hand in.
- Reaching further
You use the reply to reveal patterns, contrasts, and interpretive gaps across texts beyond your unaided reading.
Using the assistant to produce work beyond what you could have produced alone, rather than the same work faster.
- Briefing the assistant
You brief the assistant with corpus context, research purpose, source extracts, coding scheme, output format, and required comparisons.
Giving the assistant the reader, purpose and source facts the work depends on, and the form, length and contents you need back.
- The finished piece
You turn coded output into a defensible analysis, adding interpretation, textual evidence, and clear findings for its audience.
Turning the assistant's output into something a colleague could use: editing it, combining it and adding original thinking.
Control
What you keep in hand: checking its work, keeping information safe, and deciding what stays with a person.
- Checking its work
You check each claimed pattern, code, linguistic feature, and interpretation against source passages before using the analysis.
Checking the assistant's claims, figures and assumptions against the source before the work is used.
- Safety and confidentiality
You keep identifiable, restricted, and non-consented text out of the tool and output, declining unsafe corpus requests.
Handling confidential and personal data, seeing compliance, ethical and reputational risk, and declining unsafe requests.
- Knowing what to delegate
You decide which coding and corpus work the assistant receives, what you retain, and who approves interpretations.
Deciding what to hand to the assistant and what to keep, and at what stakes, before any output exists.
What you do in the exam
Every skill of the Standard is examined the same way, at the same pass mark, in the Applied AI Badge. Two tasks with the assistant and two sets of questions, over 15 minutes. You do real work with an AI assistant beside you, hand in what you would send, then answer follow-up questions about your own work.
- 01
A coded corpus from interview transcripts, with categories, excerpts, and recurring patterns.
- 02
A comparative discourse analysis from two document sets, with contrasting language features and interpretations.
- 03
A methods section from coding notes and source evidence, explaining AI assistance and validation.
These are the kinds of task the exam sets. Your exam draws its own from a bank the Examination Board has approved.
- Exam
- Applied AI Badge
- Price
- US$19
- Length
- 15 minutes
- Attempts
- One for each purchase, then a 7-day wait
What the badge certifies
What an employer reads
Passed an Institute exam in textual & discourse analysis. They briefed the assistant with corpus context, caught unsupported codes, and delivered source-grounded discourse findings.
You earn it in one exam, never by finishing a course.
- Name on the certificate
- Applied AI Badge: Textual & Discourse Analysis
- Who it is for
- Qualitative researchers, linguists, communication scholars, humanities academics, and postgraduate students analysing texts.
- Valid for
- 2 years, then renew
- Verification
- Every badge has a public verification page an employer can open, and a place in the public register if you choose it.
- Marked by
- An AI examiner marks your work against a marking guide and quotes your own words as evidence. A person checks anything borderline.
Near it in the Standard
- Academic Research
Conducts academic research with AI and verifies every source and claim.
- Market Research
Runs market research with AI and separates evidence from confident guesswork.
- Policy Research
Researches policy with AI and confirms every citation against the primary text.
- Academic Writing
Writes academically with AI's help, with sources real, cited and read.
- Critical Evaluation
Evaluates claims and evidence critically with and about AI.
- Customer Research & Insight
Gathers customer insight with AI and checks that the synthesis reflects what customers said.
- Competitor Analysis
Analyses competitors with AI and verifies the facts before they shape strategy.
- Qualitative Research Methods
Applies qualitative methods with AI support and keeps interpretation rigorous and human.
Everything in Research and Insight, including the level exams that name the whole function.
Practise it before you pay for it
Practice is free (up to 50 sessions a day) and shaped like the exam, with a coach that tells you what to change. It never counts towards a credential, and an exercise you practised is kept out of your exam.
Want to learn it first? AI+ Textual & Discourse Analysis covers this skill. No book is required to pass.