The Sage Encyclopedia of

Qualitative Research Methods

Hermeneutics

Contributors: Melissa Freeman

Editors: Lisa M. Given
Book Title: The Sage Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research Methods
Chapter Title: "Hermeneutics"
Pub. Date: 2008
Access Date: January 13, 2016
Publishing Company: SAGE Publications, Inc.
City: Thousand Oaks
Print ISBN: 9781412941631
Online ISBN: 9781412963909
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781412963909.n194
Print pages: 386-389
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http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781412963909.n194
From the Greek to interpret or to make clear, hermeneutics is the study of the theory
and the practice of understanding and interpretation. It is built on the assumption that
interpretation is not a straightforward activity even though people do it all the time
when they interact with others and the world. The concept is based on Hermes, the
Greek mythological god of boundaries and of those who cross them, who is said to
have translated the gods’ messages for humans. To do so successfully, he had to
understand both the language and the mind-set of the gods (so as to communicate
the intended message) and those of humans (so as to communicate it in a way they
could understand). It is this space of encounter, this boundary between person and text,
person and person, or person and world where meaning is open to interpretation that is
of interest to researchers who draw from hermeneutics. This entry explains the nature
of hermeneutics and provides a brief overview of its influence on Western thought
since the 18th century. Then focusing on philosophical hermeneutics, it describes how
the interplay of tradition, language, dialogue, experience, and context contribute to
its theory of interpretation. Finally, the role of hermeneutics is examined in qualitative
research.

[p. 386 ↓ ]

Hermeneutic Traditions
Hermeneutics originally focused on the interpretation of sacred and legal texts and has
developed into an influential school of thought in continental philosophy as well as in
applied social research. Immanuel Kant's (1724–1804) insight that there is no access
to an uninterpreted or atheoretical world of knowledge but rather that the mind actively
makes sense of the world based on prior conceptual frameworks paved the way for
hermeneutics as it is known today.

Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834) was one of the first philosophers to theorize that
hermeneutic thinking is a universal and natural part of being human in a social world
rather than simply an application of strategies for interpreting texts. Schleiermacher
distinguished between two forms of interpretation: acts of interpretation that happen
all the time as people encounter texts or the world around them and on which they act

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without much thought and those that deal with ambiguous, complex texts or situations
where understanding is not immediately available or clear and for which a doctrine of
interpretation—hermeneutics—is needed.

The door Schleiermacher opened up—that understanding and interpreting are naturally
occurring, innate human abilities, as well as human inabilities—is at the core of modern
hermeneutics. If people always understood correctly or readily, then bureaucrats,
teachers, therapists, researchers, and other social interpreters would not be needed to
assist with obscure texts or unfamiliar points of view. It is because understanding can
be manipulated, mistaken, and misguided that hermeneutic theories of understanding
take into account the social, cultural, and political contexts, past and present, in
which understanding and misunderstanding take shape. It is also because humans
continue to make sense of the world around them and act on those interpretations
regardless of their familiarity, interests, or knowledge that understanding the process
of understanding is a core issue in social research. Contemporary hermeneutic
approaches are, therefore, concerned with the processes through which understanding
and interpretation occur, the truthfulness of interpretative statements, and the conditions
for new understanding. They differ, however, in their focus and purpose.

When discussing the interpretation of a text—for example, a story told by another—

conservative hermeneutic theorists follow a methodical approach involving bracketing
out their foreconceptions to find the true meaning of the story that is determined as the
author's intent. Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911), Emilio Betti (1890–1968), and Eric Donald
Hirsch, Jr. (1928–) have all been interested in developing a methodical approach to
hermeneutics. For these theorists, preconceptions are identified and controlled in
order to get to the truth of that which needs interpreting. Critical hermeneutic theorists
—suspicious that any text can reveal the meaning of an author—seek instead to
uncover the shaping presence of history, power, and ideology evident in the author's
expression as well as in the reader's interpretation. Exposing ideological traces involves
a critical and reflective process that ideally allows the author and reader to create
more empowering interpretations from which to act. Paul Ricoeur (1913–2005) and
Jürgen Habermas (1929–) are most often associated with this approach. In contrast
to both of these approaches, philosophical hermeneutics emphasizes neither the text
nor the reader; rather, the focus is on the event of understanding or interpretation as it
occurs in the encounter between reader and text. Unlike conservative hermeneutics,

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the reader's foreconceptions are not bracketed out; they are understood as creating
the intersubjective link necessary for engagement with the text. However, like critical
hermeneutics, the purpose of philosophical hermeneutics is the creation of deeper
or new understanding, and that means disrupting, to a certain extent, the imposition
of one's preconceptions on the text as it is encountered. This process cannot be
controlled, however, since there is no method that can predict in advance which prior
conceptions or judgments will enable understanding from those that might obscure or
distort it. It is during the interpretive process that these influential forces are revealed,
and so it is only then that they can be contended with. The question of what this self-
examination entails is at the core of philosophical hermeneutics. Martin Heidegger
(1889–1976) and Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900–2002) are primary figures behind this
approach.

Although Schleiermacher advanced the notion that a method for interpretation was
essential to guard against misunderstanding and paved the way for Dilthey, he also
pointed out that the human potential for misunderstanding was the result of limited
exposure to alternative viewpoints and that increasing the plurality of experience would
increase the likelihood that understanding, not misunderstanding would occur. It is on
[p. 387 ↓ ] this transformative potential of experience that Heidegger and Gadamer
have built their hermeneutics. Furthermore, they argued that the experience of being
in the world is the basis for understanding and interpretation, not a separate event.
Humans do not first look at the world and then understand it, but they live out their
understandings every day. For this reason, interpretation cannot be reduced to a
predetermined method, but it occurs interpretively during the interpretive process itself.

Historically Effected Consciousness

As Kant made clear, an unsituated and uninterpreted state of being does not exist.
Gadamer spoke of “historically effected consciousness” to describe the condition
of being shaped and continuously reshaped by multiple horizons of meaning or
traditions and the conscious self-awareness of being so effected. In contrast to theorists
who suggest suspending the influence of tradition during the interpretive process,
Gadamer believed that it is only by engaging tradition that understanding is possible.
Tradition may not only constrain understanding by limiting available perspectives, but

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it also enables it by providing points of connection to the text or words of the other.
Furthermore, tradition is not a stable, unitary perspective from which everything is
viewed, but is made visible in the prejudices and assumptions that are aroused by the
text or another. The idea of bracketing, therefore, misunderstands the role of tradition
and the role of the other in understanding. That is, different prejudices emerge and
different words are spoken about a topic in a conversation with a friend or a researcher
because each situation gives expression to a different structure for understanding
and thus to a different interaction between tradition, the object of consideration, and
the person with whom people are in dialogue. Like Hermes, the interpretive event is
affected simultaneously by prior experiences with the topic and the audience with whom
the topic is being explored. The meaning that is made, therefore, is not prethought, but
is brought forth in the event of participating in dialogue with another.

Heidegger used the image of a circle to convey the dynamic interplay between the
object in the world that one seeks to understand and the subjective experiences of
the object, past and present. When hearing a story, people project their own meaning
(informed by tradition) into it. In turn, however, a point in the story might provoke an
alternative interpretation, thus promoting a new relationship between the person and
the tradition. This new relationship informs one's continuing interpretation until a new
idea is similarly provoked. This process is not a linear, however, but happens in the
process of understanding itself. In other words, everyday interpretive work is embedded
in historical, cultural, and linguistic traditions, but as much as it is always oriented to
present concerns—the topic at hand—is always under revision.

Understanding as Dialogue
Gadamer used the metaphor of a fusion of horizons to describe this process. Horizon
denotes both the space (and the limiting conceptual framework) that one is located in
and the presence of a beyond. Simply traveling a short distance, spatially or through
one's interaction with another, shifts both the location one is in and demarcates a
new possible beyond. As people move and experience other frames of reference,
their understanding of self and the world cannot help but to incorporate some of this
worldly text into their own. Simultaneously, however, because people carry forward
their prior experiences, people orient themselves to understanding in particular ways.

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Gadamer believed that the potential to develop new understandings occurs because of
this interplay between one's perspectives on the world (our traditions) and that which
one's current situation or concern arouses in one. It is during this encounter that people
are most able to reflect upon the historically effected nature of their state of being in
the world. It is in dialogue, Gadamer explained, that the experience of understanding
is most productive because the other person, and therefore, his or her horizon, is
simultaneously seeking expression alongside ours. The arousal of questions that
the voice of the other awakens in people, or does not awake, is at the core of what
Gadamer calls a genuine hermeneutic experience and is that for which a fusion of
horizons strives.

Genuine Hermeneutic Experience

Heidegger argued that propositional statements, those that were used to “measure”
or to account for understanding “scientifically,” could not account for the complexity of
experience. To understand human experience, Heidegger explained, one must think
beyond the statement to the experience itself or, as he put it, to that which strives to be
brought forth in language.

[p. 388 ↓ ]

Although Heidegger emphasized the experience of experience, Gadamer went on to

develop the role language plays in bringing experience to understanding. Gadamer
explained that the point of contact between self and others and between one's
embodied experience and the expression of that experience is language. This point
of contact necessarily means that in the process of bringing forth understanding in
language, some aspect of experience remains unsaid. Simultaneously, the voice of the
other or the topic at hand arouse some but not other aspects of what one and the other
might mean. For Gadamer, new understanding requires that people allow themselves to
engage in all that the conversation offers. As language unfolds, it reveals the prejudices
of both speakers while also concealing areas where contact did not occur. Gadamer
argued that a genuine hermeneutic conversation calls simultaneously for engagement in
the experience of understanding, one that seeks out the possible meanings in both what
is said and what is unsaid, and critical reflection on the structure of understanding that

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one is engaged in. This need requires a stance of active questioning and reflection that
does not rest on first impressions, but seeks to expose and examine understanding's
deeper, hidden meanings.

Hermeneutics in Qualitative Research

Hermeneutics challenges both the aim of social science and its reliance on a narrow
conception of understanding encouraged by scientific methods. It alters the conception
of inquiry from seeking explanations or understanding about someone or something
to one of engaging with the dynamic and historically situated nature of human
understanding. Inquiry, therefore, is no longer framed as a separate event from that
which is being inquired into; both must be acknowledged in the final analysis.

Although not having an explicit method, hermeneutics has influenced the theory and
practice of qualitative research in several ways. First, because language (and other
symbolic meaning systems) mediates people's experiences of the world, qualitative
inquirers are paying closer attention to the language used by research participants
while also acknowledging the symbolic systems they too inhabit and that give shape
to their study. Theorists, such as Clifford Geertz (1926–2006), have written extensively
about the dynamic interplay involved when interpreting the interpretations of others.
Second, these contributions have informed how qualitative researchers talk about
data collection, analysis, and representation, as each is seen as part of a dialogic,
dynamic, holistic, and self-reflective process where interpretation and understandings
are developed continuously along the way rather than as separate stages of a study.
Finally, the hermeneutic potential that the space of difference between self and other
opens up has caused theorists, such as Charles Taylor (1931–), to call on social
inquirers to reenvision their role not as elicitors of information that benefit social science,
but as promoters of cross-cultural dialogue where understanding of self and other occur
concurrent to inquiring into the world people share.

MelissaFreeman

http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781412963909.n194
See also

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• Critical Hermeneutics
• Interpretation
• Understanding

Further Readings

Bernstein, R. J. (1983). Beyond objectivism and relativism: Science, hermeneutics, and

praxis. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Dostal, R. J. (Ed.)., ed. (2002). The Cambridge companion to Gadamer. Cambridge,

UK: Cambridge University Press.

Gadamer, H.-G. (1999). Truth and method (2nd ed., J. Weinsheimer &, ed. D. G.
Marshall, Trans.)., ed. New York: Continuum. (Original work published 1975)

Grondin, J. (1994). Introduction to philosophical hermeneutics. New Haven, CT: Yale

University Press.

Smith, J. K. (1993). Hermeneutics and qualitative inquiry. In D. J. Flinders &, ed. G. E.

Mills (Eds., ed. ), Theory and concepts in qualitative research: Perspectives from the
field (pp. 183–200). New York: Teachers College Press

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