There has been a significant increase in the research interest for the discursive and narrative approaches over the last two decades. Currently, these approaches hold a leading position within qualitative research methods. Philosophical and theoretical assumptions underlying these approaches have been discussed in this paper from their very foundations to the conceptual considerations and introduction of the basic characteristics of particular types of discourse and narrative analysis. A special attention has been paid to the discursive psychology, the Foucauldian discourse analysis, the archeology of knowledge and the life story research. This text represents one of many interpretations of targeted methods of the new paradigm.