In the 21st century, discourse analysis has been parallel to ethnography in language policy research, forming two major research paths. Structural discourse analysis focuses on discourse structure and reveals policy meaning construction through intertextuality analysis. Social historical discourse analysis emphasizes the social function of language and analyzes how policy implementers utilize localization strategies through contextualization. Critical discourse analysis focuses on ideology and power structures, revealing biases and discrimination in policy documents through legitimization strategies. Interactive discourse analysis focuses on the discourse confrontation and negotiation in the process of language policy, analyzing the formation and implementation of policies. Multimodal discourse analysis explores multimodal forms such as language landscapes to avoid emphasizing power content in research. The combination of discourse analysis and ethnography can achieve the best results, while narrative analysis helps to reveal the macro micro connections of language policies. There is a tendency in current research to deviate from linguistics, and it should be advocated to use discourse analysis to study language policies and leverage the advantages of linguistics as a discipline.