The paper compares several positions that have been formulated, during the last years, on the importance of methods and methodology in discourse analysis. It confines on some contrastive positions in the German debate in which different opinions on the how and why of discourse analysis become manifest. On the one hand it is claimed that its methodology should be embedded in extensive research programs, and only by this the common standards in the social sciences can be fulfilled (part 1). On the other hand, there are positions that express criticism towards the "methodologisation" of discourse analysis (part 2). The paper does not try to find a final answer to this question, it instead shows that reducing the debate on a pro or con of methods and/or methodology conceals that there are, on both sides, quite different opinions on the how and why of discourse analysis.