232 ANALYZING DATA
Thus, frame analysis, as defined here, requires the analytic isolation of taken-for-granted as-
sumptions and beliefs, that is, categories of thought. This can be done by logical inference. Ana-
lyzing the structure of the logic of an author’s argument, which includes the author’s interpretation
of evidence, can yield an understanding of the conceptually prior assumptions and beliefs that
shaped that interpretation and argument. Indeed, the exercise of deducing an author’s assump-
tions from a variety of their published works and finding similarities across them increases con-
fidence that these categories of thought are really there and not the figment of the researcher’s
imagination. These deductions are, nonetheless, certainly up for question, and so scrutiny by
other researchers serves to increase the sense of their validity.
Frame analysis also requires an explanation of how categories of thought work together to
shape perception and define a situation. It must be illustrated how cognitive categories operate to
organize, shape, and classify raw experiential material, that is, make it meaningful. In detailing
this process of meaning construction, it must be shown how the process of constructing meaning
is, simultaneously, a process of constraining meaning. As Burke stated, “[E]very way of seeing is
also a way of not seeing” (1965 [1935], 49). Fish (1980, 356) has made the same point: “[W]ithin
a set of interpretive assumptions, to know what you can do is, ipso facto, to know what you can’t
do; indeed, you can’t know one without the other; they come together in a diacritical package,
indissolubly wed.”
Yet another part of frame analysis is the specification of overlap between competing frames.
Though divergence in frames is more easily spotted than overlap, it remains important to mark
out this overlap. The overlap is what permits people with divergent definitions of a situation to
interact within one “conversation” (e.g., an academic dispute or policy dispute). Divergence in
frames may lead participants in a dispute to “talk past” each other, but the overlap is what permits
participants to engage in the conversation in the first place, even if they come to see themselves as
engaging in a dispute. Agreement that certain rules apply to the dispute—for example, no ad
hominem attacks—may also be a feature of overlap. In general, overlap marks out the boundaries
of dispute. In a legal dispute, for example, all participants might hew to the institutional “gram-
mar” of legitimacy, making arguments based on original intent, legal precedent, and so on, even
if their interpretations of original intent or precedent are divergent.
A frame analysis, finally, might integrate a dimension of action and purpose. Although Schon
and Rein’s concept of framing (1994) is problematic because it blurs the analytic distinction
between baseline categories of thought and their products, they have usefully introduced the
dimension of action into a theory of framing. In earlier work, Rein (1983) has insisted on the
importance of including purpose and action as essential parts of the knowing, naming, and think-
ing process. “A frame is a way of describing how people think about reality and linking this
description to human purposes” (1983, 101, emphasis added). A frame denotes “the perspective
by which we see reality and act on it.... A frame is broader than a theory because it contains the
normative action implications of a theory and the interests served by it” (1983, 97). Yanow (1995a),
too, integrates a dimension of action into her frame analysis, conceptualizing frames as both
models of prior thought and models for subsequent action. This integration of action and purpose
into frame analysis makes eminent sense because, in real life, purposes attach to the use of cogni-
tive categories. We must remember, though, that many different actions and purposes can attach
to a single set of baseline categories. Again, an analytic distinction must be preserved, this time
between the use of cognitive categories and actions/purposes.
By following Schon, Rein, and Yanow, and integrating perspective and purpose into a concept
of framing, we may expand the scope of problems in public law that frame analysis might reach.
Judicial purpose is primary among them, for, as Gillman (1999) has emphasized, judicial purposes