Abstract The discourse of a social group or community is the whole of its verbal and textual production. It represents its communicative repertoire and the symbolic space and structure of that repertoire. Regarding social movements, it is common that oppositional discourse draws upon the conflicts, struggles, and divisions of the broader social, political, and cultural environment, and articulates these elements to make the ideas it expresses both challenging to opponents and familiar to potential supporters. Analysts sometimes use the plural form, discourses, to emphasize that what is being discussed and acted upon is never unanimous, but often challenged and negated by opposing groups. These researchers sometimes stress the emergent and agentic character of textual production, variably called the rhetorical approach (Billig 1995), the rhetorical turn (Simon 1990), or the dialogic perspective (Steinberg 2001). These approaches treat meaning as context‐specific, multifaceted, ever evolving, and contested, which is widely recognized to be true. The operative question, however, is if these qualities make traditional social‐science analysis that focuses on the measurement of causal variables and relationships suspect.
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