PHILOSOPHICAL PRESUPPOSITIONS AND THE HUMAN SCIENCES 21forth; see, for example, Ciardi 1959). Contending, in turn, with this approach was one that argued
that readers were not passive recipients of authors’ meanings but active constructors of meaning
themselves, bringing their own backgrounds to the texts they read, drawing on these backgrounds
as well as on the words of the text in its interpretation. Meaning, in this view, is created out of an
interaction between reader and text, or among reader, text, and author’s intentions (e.g., Iser
1989).^37 From this perspective, textual meaning is not finite, since each reader hypothetically
brings a different experience to the reading, or the same reader, marked by new experiences in the
interim, might even “find” a different meaning on two separate readings.
The fourth moment, then, takes place in the reading (or hearing) of the research report. What
this highlights is the distinction between “authored” texts and “constructed” texts, and it points to
one of the issues in evaluative criteria for research and one of its central dilemmas. As Peregrine
Schwartz-Shea notes in chapter 5 of this book, one of the interpretive procedures for dealing with
questions of research trustworthiness is to involve situational members in reading the draft re-
search report. The dilemma is how to proceed when that reading is at odds with the researcher’s
interpretation. Seeing textual meaning as not finite and reading as an interpretive moment sug-
gests a potential reframing of such an encounter, from one in which the researcher dismisses the
reading as inherently flawed to one that opens the door to an exploration of rationales (or back-
grounds) for different readings. (The procedural implications are explored in that chapter.)
The same layering of interpretation and meaning holds when the subject of interpretation is a
(literal) text or a physical artifact, rather than an event. This may be seen in examples from the
organizational implementation of public policies (e.g., Ingersoll and Adams 1992, Stein 2004,
Swaffield 1998, Yanow 1996; see also Chock 1995, Linder 1995). Not only are legislative and
other language and organizational buildings texts (or “texts”) that are interpreted by implementers
and others acting in the situation for which the text was produced; but those interpretations—in
the form of agency language, objects, and acts—themselves become “texts” that are “read,” by
those actors and others. An act, object or spoken language is interpreted by its “readers”—agency
staff, clients, and so forth. And these interpretations come in the form of responses—acts, lan-
guage, and/or objects—that themselves are then treated as texts and interpreted, prompting fur-
ther responses. It is in this sense that interpretive methodologists claim that “it” is interpretation
or meaning-construction “all the way down.”
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
[There is a saying] I heard often in prison,
“if you treat a man human,
he’ll treat you human.”
The staff and prisoners treated me human,
and I tried to do the same.
—Ann Chih Lin (2000, 189)The methods of accessing or generating and analyzing data used today in meaning-focused re-
search study both meaning and the artifacts that embody and convey it. Interpretive science’s
appreciation for the multiplicities of possible meaning and attendant ambiguities has refocused
attention on the perspectival, and even rhetorical, character of scientific writing (a concern of
feminist theory and science studies also). This has led to an appreciation for the narrative or
storied character of both scientific and everyday communication, something noted especially by
Maynard-Moody and Musheno in their chapter. Attention to language’s persuasive elements brings