The article compares key concepts of the traditional (cognitive) and discursive approaches to identity. The capabilities of the concept of social category and the process of social categorization, relation between social role and position, the concepts of social norms, context, and social practices are discussed. Two variants of discursive approach are discussed: D-discourse and d-discourse analysis. We discuss the relation between the most developed trends in discursive research of identity: critical discourse analysis, the positioning theory and discursive psychology, the performative analysis, membership categorization analysis and conversational analysis.Undertaken analysis reveals that from the perspective of discursive approach identity is formed and manifests itself in the communication, its main feature is flexibility; therefore it has varying and depending on the situation character. Identity is embedded into the broad cultural context and being reproduced on the basis of the existing social practices. The special role of language and text in the formation of identity is emphasized.

Article is devoted a problem of studying of gnoseological and practical features, of modern qualitative analysis methods: Miles and huberman’s matrix method, Strauss and korbin’s grounded theory and discourse-analysis. The results of comparative empirical research and author’s models for consideration of analytical toolkit from the point of view of specificity of the data, features of the coding of the primary data, strategy of the description of the received categories, interpretation of results are resulted.