Hermeneutics

Hermeneutics is the study of how interpretive processes come to bear on the phenomenon of understanding and is often mentioned with phenomenology when discussed as a communication research method. It is a method of taking into account the phenomenon of meaning-making and its resultant impact on individual and group identity formation. For this reason, hermeneutics anticipates all communicative encounters as (inter)cultural. Sometimes referred to as interpretive theory or cultural theory, hermeneutics is a philosophical perspective and critical method initially derived from Western and Continental philosophical traditions, from such philosophers as Friedrich Schleiermacher, Wilhelm Dilthey, Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Paul Ricouer. A theory of hermeneutics addresses how individuals and collectives understand texts and communicative actions via their interpretive practices. [Page 649]As a method, hermeneutics is concerned with how communities “know together” through meaningful interpretive practices held in common. Many religious traditions, for example, uphold canonical texts—such as the Bible, the Koran, or the Torah—as a set of codes that, if interpreted orthodoxly (roughly translated from Greek as “proper knowledge”), provides a source of understanding that binds together a religious community. Hermeneutic theorists believe that to best understand a group’s communication about itself, scholars should look to how they come to share understanding about those things that define and unify the group. Ultimately, this process of understanding—whether it is the significance of a religious text, the intention of a novelist, or the meaning behind a viral advertisement—is the result of social interaction, of a group of individuals who interpret the meaning of a text in a similar way.

This entry discusses issues of interpretation, especially as these relate to social understanding. It also provides examples of how communication and media theorists understand the processes of interpretive understanding and communication production to be mutually dependent upon one another. For communication and media theorists, to theorize interpretation processes one must necessarily take into account how these impact the production of communication messages, or texts, which can be understood to be the products of social interaction. Finally, this entry discusses some implications regarding the use of hermeneutics, or hermeneutic theory, as a communication method.