Investigating Our Experience in the World: A Primer on Qualitative Inquiry

Chapter 4: Interpreting Texts

Chapter 4 Interpreting Texts Hermeneutics as Rigorous Play: ‘Representing for Someone’ The primary investigator first reads the interview transcript alone to get a sense of its major points. Then, he or she takes the transcript to the research team for further consideration. Two primary benefits of group input are evident. First, different life experiences and interpretive styles enable members of the research team to bring a multiplicity of perspectives to bear on the text. Second, familiarity with the primary investigator’sbracketinginterviewandspontaneousdiscussionofother relevant life experiences among team members empower the researchers to hold one another accountable for ensuring that each proposed understanding enjoys direct textual support. Thus, the importance of communal life to scholarship is demonstrated during the interpretive stage of research as multiple views of a text and awareness of one another ’s presuppositions help researchers produce nuanced and rigorous descriptions of phenomenal experience. Despite this continuing emphasis on analytical rigor, there is also some playfulness involved in the to-and-fro movement underlying textual interpretation, which is reminiscent of Gadamer’s notion of play as “representing for someone” (i.e., standing in for someone). When researchers put themselves in the place of the participant by giving voice to his or her words, interpretation takes on the character of a stage play in which “[e]verybody asks what is supposed to be represented, what is ‘meant.’” Further, what unfolds is understood to rest absolutely within play (text) and “brings to light what is otherwise constantly hidden and withdrawn” (Gadamer 1975/2004). The goal of illuminating textual meaning through representation of the interview transcript, however, grounds hermeneutic playfulness in an empirical and serious purposefulness that distinguishes it from more childish forms of play. 26 Chapter 4 Presenting the Text to the Interpretive Group At the beginning of a group interpretive session, the facilitator introduces the researcher presenting an interview transcript for examination . The presenter usually discusses the research question and then says a few words about the immediate participant (‘“Katie” is a fortyfour -year-old married mother of two children with Down Syndrome.’) As this is going on, two items are passed around the interpretive table. The first is a confidentiality pledge, such as the one contained in appendix B, which is dated and signed by every member of the interpretive team before being returned to the primary investigator for safe-keeping in his or her project files. This pledge is one sign that interpreters take seriously their commitments to the participant’s privacy. The second is a stack of photocopies of the interview transcript being dealt with that day. Team members use these texts to follow along and to jot down notes as the transcript is read aloud. The transcripts are also returned to the researcher at the end of the interpretive session for safe-keeping. Most transcripts require four to six group hours to complete, which means that the same transcript may be brought to the group more than once. Nonetheless, every presentation of a transcript (including repeat appearances ) entails completion of a confidentiality pledge. This helps remind members of the research team that discussion surrounding textual interpretation—not just its contents—is privileged and not to be discussed outside the present meeting. This practice promotes the freedom vital to dialogical hermeneutics and seeks to ensure that information offered on the premise of confidentiality remains closely held by the researchers and does not ‘leak’ beyond this group. Plotting Hermeneutic Circles After the introductory remarks, the group facilitator moves to begin the process of interpretation by asking for two volunteers, one to read aloud the interviewer’s lines and another the participant’s. (“I’ll be ‘I’” and “I’ll be ‘P’” are common rejoinders.) Reading proceeds until someone stops the process in order to comment on what stands out to him or her about the current passage; that is, whatever is figural about it. This is something every member of the research team is free to do at any time, although it is most frequently done by the group facilitator. For example, someone might say, “I want us to stop here. The phrase ‘I was like a dare-devil’ in line 64 catches my attention. I mean, this per- Interpreting Texts 27 son is telling us that he actually jumped from one skyscraper to another on a motorcycle. That is a dare-devil to me; there is no ‘like’ about it as far as I can see...