The article presents the author’s observation of texts and discourse research methods. Theories, methods and techniques from various scientific disciplines for working with texts and discourses as empirical data are observed, namely traditional methods, content analysis, grounded theory, ethnography, methods based on political psychology, etnomethodology, phenomenology, semiotics, text linguistics, speech acts theory and cognitive linguistics theories, discourse analysis, symbolic politics / policy, methods of sociolinguistics, theory of communication, functional pragmatics, theory of difference, hermeneutics, objective hermeneutics, methods of psycholinguistics, psychosemantics, suggestive linguistics and phonosemantics. A number of types of content analysis, including protocols for the study of leadership from political psychology are discussed in the article. Due to the fact that the subjects of various disciplines within linguistics and related sciences, as well as various methods intercross often, this classification is only one from many possible. The author emphasizes that the Russian political science lacks application of methods observed in the article, even in the cases where they can and should be used, on the contrary to other sciences.