INTERPRETIVISM AND THE LINGUISTIC TURN

There is a broad range of theoretical approaches within the interpretive tradition, with varying ontological and epistemological positions (Burrell & Morgan, 1979). However, a key unifying factor is their focus on achieving a meaningful understanding of the actors ’ frame of reference, what Weber (1922) referred to as verstehen. In Weber’s view, this ability and desire to achieve an in-depth, first-order understanding was what distinguished the social from the natural sciences. Meaningful understanding is often contrasted with explanation (Ricœur, 1991), the search for causal, law-like deterministic regularities that is to be found in the positivist tradition – a tradition based on the methodology of the natural sciences. This simple contrast, however, does not do justice to the potential for meaning-ful understanding and explanation to operate in a complementary manner. Interpretivism should not be equated with subjectivism. This perspective is based upon the misconception that interpretivism lacks ‘objectivity ’ and instead affords primacy to the idiosyncratic meanings of single actors with no necessary relation to a more shared, intersubjective and verifiable reality. If interpretivism were to assume more subjective properties, this would suggest a potential for unlimited interpretations of observations and textual data, with no means of verification or validation. Such a characterization is at the heart of Denzin’s (1983) criticism that interpretivists reject generalization since each instance of observed social interaction is unique and social settings are complex and indeterminate. Interpretive understanding does not, however, mean a degeneration to subjec-tivism, unlimited interpretations and the inability to make any sort of generalization