Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-29T14:52:24.352Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Interpretive Approaches: A Psycholinguistic Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

Dane L. Harwood
Get access

Abstract

An interpretive approach to studying human activity is a potentially powerful set of procedures for the social sciences. The proponents of this methodology focus on levels of “discourse constraints” that give meaning to public behavior in their attempt to link the “explanation” of texts to an “understanding” of context. The argument can be extended to the search by cognitive scientists and psycholinguists for constraints on the “discourse of thought,” including the interrelationship of thought and the context within which thinking takes place.

The “texts” of human behavior, linguistic or otherwise, seem to cohere. Discovering how the principles of coherence are acquired by individuals as they develop, and how this “tacit knowledge” informs “public action,” will require joint effort by many social scientists, including psychologists. A rigorous interpretive approach also requires that we acknowledge how, as researchers, we add layers of meaning to the activities we observe.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 44 , Issue 4 , August 1985 , pp. 779 - 784
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1985

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

List of References

Becker, A. L. 1979 “Text-Building, Epistemology, and Aesthetics in Javanese Shadow Theater.” In Becker, A. L. and Yengoyan, A. A., eds., 1979:211–43.Google Scholar
Becker, A. L., and Yengoyan, A. A., eds, 1979. The Imagination of Reality: Essays in Southeast Asian Coherence Systems. Norwood, N.J.: Ablex.Google Scholar
Becker, J. 1979. “Time and Tune in Java,” In Becker, A. L. and Yengoyan, A. A., eds., 1979:197–210.Google Scholar
Geertz, C. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Kuhn, T. S. 1970. Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 2nd ed.Chicago: University Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Labov, W., and Waletzky, J.. 1967. “Narrative Analysis.” In Helm, J., ed.,Essays on the Verbal and Visual Arts. Seattle: University of Washington Press.Google Scholar
Lackstrom, J. E., Selinker, L., and Trimbull, L. P.. 1975. “Grammar and Technical English.” English Teaching Forum, 13(3/4):250–60.Google Scholar
Polanyi, M. 1966. The Tacit Dimension. New York: Doubleday.Google Scholar
Ricoeur, P. 1979. “The Model of the Text: Meaningful Action Considered as a Text.” In Rabinow, P. and Sullivan, W., eds., Interpretive Social Science: A Reader, pp.73–102. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schwartzman, H. B. 1978. Transformations: The Anthropology of Children's Play. New York: Plenum.Google Scholar
Scribner, S., and Cole, M.. 1974. Culture and Thought: A Psychological Introduction. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Scribner, S., and Cole, M.. 1981. The Psychology of Literacy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar