Textual analysis as a method for historians of nursing.

An alternative form of qualitative methodology for academic research involves a critical reading of texts that looks beyond a work's surface to see its contents as a form of argument with certain presuppositions. Textual analysis as a methodology is a means of gathering and analyzing data and making likely interpretations of that information. It includes analyzing not only what is represented hut also how it is represented.1 Robert Berkhofer argues that historians do not adequately problematize history as "discourse and methodology," and he calls for new ways to examine our work.2 In his assertion that textual analysis can be used by historians to show the "representation of the past as a form of text or narrative," he is influenced by modern literary theorists who see the word "text" as designating "not only the written work itself but also the framework of presuppositions that produce its form as well as content."3 Thus, a "textbook, like a famous document or great book, invites interpretation as well as embodies interpretation."4 Contemporary literary theory includes theoretical approaches such as semiotics, structuralism, poststructuralism, feminist theory, postmodernism, and deconstruction. Berkhofer's argument selects from among several of these frameworks. Whereas it is beyond the scope of this article to address the challenges posed by these theories, for the purposes of this paper, textual analysis will be used to refer to the process of interpreting how "texts" or histories are constructed by examining what they describe or say.5 Textual analysis does not solve all the many problems to which historians seek answers. Indeed, it does not involve examining what actually happened, but rather analyzes how the arrival of knowledge came about. Determining what happened still involves seeking and weighing evidence, the traditional means of doing history.6 At times, however, textual analysis can provide historians an alternative way of thinking about things. In this article, I consider when we, as historians of nursing, might want to use this method both in our teaching and in our research. I also provide an example from my own work on Catholic sisters' nursing that compares what nuns said with Florence Nightingale's words, combined with a larger expository synthesis. Uses of Critical Textual Analysis Further clarification of the word "text" involves seeing it as any interpretation of the meaning of a book, film, speech, journal article, piece of clothing, or television program.7 Joan Scott asserts that language in the form of texts-books, documents, and other expressions, even cultural practices-should be analyzed for "specific historical and contextual meanings." Thus, we can better comprehend how people "represent and understand their world, including who they are and how they relate to others."8 Textual analysis, then, provides insight into how specific communities of people construct meaning in their lives and work. In "Constructing the Mind of Nursing," Diane Hamilton analyzes the intellectual foundations of modern nursing by examining nursing leaders' ideas.9 She states, To disclose meaning and offer interpretation, the historian must search for the relationship between the authors intentions and the text, the relationship between the author's life and the text, and the interaction between the culture and its institution and the text.10 Monica Baly's account of the Nightingale Fund provides an example. She argues against the myth of earlier histories, which asserted that most of the students from the Nightingale school at St. Thomas's were refined ladies who became superintendents of the school. According to Baly, this group made up only a small proportion of the trained nurses, but they were the leadership, and "it was the leadership that produced authors of textbooks" and wrote the histories of nursing." When writers from different contexts, including Baly, examined the evidence, they interpreted it in different ways, thereby creating new texts. …