The SAGE Encyclopedia of

Qualitative Research Methods

Reconstructive Analysis

Contributors: Lisa M. Given

Print Pub. Date: 2008
Online Pub. Date: September 15, 2008
Print ISBN: 9781412941631
Online ISBN: 9781412963909
DOI: 10.4135/9781412963909
Print pages: 741-744
This PDF has been generated from SAGE knowledge. Please note that the pagination
of the online version will vary from the pagination of the print book.

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10.4135/9781412963909.n373
Reconstructive analysis is the theoretically guided process of explicating the initially
implicit components, structures, and/or generative rules of meaning. Jrgen Habermas
introduced the expression reconstructive sciences during the 1970s to distinguish
reconstruction from inductive empiricist methods of inquiry. Reconstruction works from
the implicitly grasped know-how of an insider and internally moves this knowledge into
explicit form.

The Intersubjective and Pragmatic Basis of

Meaning
Intersubjectivity as Position-Taking
In everyday life, people act meaningfully and understand the meaningful acts of others
through forms of implicit and culturally contingent knowhow. Meaning resides most
primordially through the process of position-taking with other possible subject positions
as constructed contingently within specific cultures. Individuals may take on several
subject positions at once as well; for example, a woman with children who works parttime while attending school may take on subject positions of mother, employee, and
student in her various life roles. Position-takingintersubjectivityis a process that has
always already occurred as soon as it is noticed and is more primordial than objectivity
or subjectivity. Uses of language, signs, symbols, and the like depend on more basic
structures of intersubjectivity through which actors automatically juxtapose a cluster of
subject positions in the experience of their own actions (including thoughts) and those of
others. A wink, a gesture, and an upward cast of the eyes all convey meanings specific
to social contexts because those addressed by such acts automatically position-take
with assumed possible positions from which the acts came, with what their own position
appears to be from the possible positions of the actor, and with any number of thirdperson uninvolved positions from which the act would be understood if observed. The
same is true of fully linguistic acts. Misunderstandings and acknowledged ambiguities of

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meaning occur because the subject positions one automatically takes may or may not
accord with those taken by others in the situation.

Typifications and Interactive Settings

Preinterpretations of social contexts are provided by cultural typifications, the most
basic structures through which position taking occurs. Each such preinterpretation
is constituted internally by the juxtaposition of [p. 741 ] multiple subject positions
such that each person finding herself or himself within the situation can anticipate
the possible subjective states and actions of others as well as the anticipations that
others have regarding one's own possible states and actions. An encounter with a
stranger in a hallway, an arrival at a prearranged location with friends, and an accidental
bump with another while walking together are three examples of a huge number of
typifications that every culture provides its members. Typifications enable people to
initiate interactions with each other and to mutually establish more specific interactive
infrastructurescalled settingsin the process.
Reconstructive analysis will always begin by acquiring an insider's position in
relation to typifications and settings, so that the researcher learns to position-take
with others as her or his participants routinely position-take with each other. The
researcher must acquire forms of communicative know-how that are taken for granted
by the participants. The next step is to articulate these forms of implicit knowledge
discursively and/or facilitate the process of explication from the side of the cultural
members. Validation of the resulting formulations must come from their ability to win
the recognition of cultural insiders and from their fit with subsequently experienced
expressions and actions. Typifications and routine interactive settings can be explicated
by articulating their norms, role sets, power relations, and other intersubjectively
constituted features if doing so serves the purposes of a study.

Meaning Fields
All meaningful expressions are usually experienced as a range of possible meanings,
not as a singular unambiguous meaning, by people in everyday life. With an insider's
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understanding of typifications and settings, the qualitative researcher is able to make

meaning fields for particular expressions and acts explicit, representing the range
of possible meanings that her or his participants experience. A meaning field can
be explicated by assuming the actor's position and expressing the act again several
times with more words added to semanticize the differences in possible meanings.
Conjunctions and disjunctions (e.g., and, or, or/and, and/or) are used to display the
range of possible meanings.
As a very simple example, given a well-understood specific context, typification, and
relationship history, the greeting Hello, Mary, how are you today? said with a smile
and in friendly tones could have the following meaning field:
I'm pleased to see you!
(or/and) Let's talk a little.
Much context familiarity, both with the stream of previous action and with the culture
and site of interest, must be attained to articulate meaning fields for specific acts. A
skilled researcher takes note of meaning fields mentally when coding data or otherwise
analyzing them; it is neither necessary nor possible to explicitly reconstruct meaning
fields for all items in a data set, but it is necessary to be aware of them in the same way
that one's participants are.

Criticizable Validity Claims and the Validity

Horizon
Categorical Distinctions
Ludwig Wittgenstein's work on meaning clarified its nature to reside in implicit, culturally
contingent competencies for responding to it. The competency to respond includes
three formal modes simultaneously at one's disposal: (1) as would be appropriate
for one familiar with the culture who was just addressed by the act (second-person
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position), (2) as the actor herself or himself had just acted as when one mimics or
otherwise reproduces the act of another for some purpose (first-person position), and
(3) as one who describes the act from an uninvolved observer perspective (third-person
position). Hence, given a shared typification and setting, the act Hello, Mary, how are
you today? is understood if one can respond in the modes exemplified by I'm just
fine, how are you? (second-person response), Hello, Mary, how are you today? (firstperson reenactment), and He said hello and asked me how I am today (third-person
description). These three formal categorical distinctions are fused together in a moment
of holistic understanding and differentiated in one direction or another by the actual
response (both in action and thought) that comes next.

Meaning-Constitutive Validity Claims, the

Validity Horizon, and the Identity Claim
These three distinctions, based on what Donald Davidson called the basic speech
situation of having [p. 742 ] two or more subjects within an assumedly shared
preinterpreted context, form the basis for three basic attitudes fused as potentialities
within the understanding of meaningful action: an expressive attitude, a normconformative/nonconformative attitude, and an objectivating attitude. Habermas
identified these three attitudes and pointed out that with every act, an actor demarcates
herself or himself with three world relations: a relation with the actor's own inner
states, a relation with an assumedly shared domain of social norms, and a relation
with a world to which there is multiple access from assumedly shared third-person
perspectives.
Reconstructive analysis can be used to articulate the cultural milieu through which
actors take on world relations and demarcate their identities. The first step is to
become cognizant of the array of validity claims that constitute meaningful acts. Every
expression of meaning is constituted by a cluster of claims falling into four categories:
subjective, normative, and objective validity claims and the identity claim. An act such
as Hello, Mary, how are you today? is constituted in part by claims such as the
following: I am feeling friendly toward you (subjective claims referencing the intentions
and feelings of the actor), I am acting toward you appropriately (normative claims
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referencing a shared social order and culture), and We have just met for the first time
today, we are people who know each other from previous meetings (objective claims
pertaining to objective or objectivated features of the interactive context). In addition,
this act carries claims about the identity of the actor, perhaps as follows: I am a polite
and friendly woman and a good friend.
Every meaningful expression can, in principle, be reconstructed as a horizon of validity
claims falling within the three categories of subjectivity, normativity, and objectivity,
and it can be arrayed along a continuum of foreground to background relations. This
is called the validity horizon, and it is the most precise articulation possible for a
meaningful expression. In our example of greeting Mary, foregrounded claims would
include the subjective claim of feeling friendly toward Mary and happy to see her,
intermediate-level claims would include the subjective desire for friendly interaction
of uncertain duration as well as a normative claim that Mary ought to respond to this
greeting, and backgrounded claims would include the objective claim of previous
familiarity with each other.
Validity horizons will reveal backgrounded claims that occur frequently in the typical
actions of cultural insiders such that an entire worldview or ideology is instantiated and
reproduced in routine social interactions and practices. In addition, the identity claims of
actors will draw on cultural milieu supplying identity components in structured relations.
Components related to gender, sexual orientation, race, class, and many other things
are often within culturally specific relations of opposition, contrast, and hierarchy that
maintain power relations in a social order. Reconstructive analysis, therefore, can be
used to reveal forms of cultural power as well as deep-seated ideologies and beliefs
that are embedded within a form of life.

Internal Critique
The insight that meaningful action demarcates an actor through three basic world
relations establishes a theoretical ground for conducting sociocultural critique in
qualitative research. The demarcation of the self with every act can be fruitfully
analyzed in accordance with George Herbert Mead's distinction between the I and
the me. The me part of the self is the identity claim mentioned earlier. A chronic
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feature of all meaningful expression (although it is very backgrounded in many acts)

is the claim that the actor is such and such kind of person (usually meaning that she
or he is not another possible kind of person). But the I part of the self pertains to
the fact that actors hold themselves and others responsible for their actions. One is
never simply one's roles and identity claims; one is also the author of one's roles and
identity claims. Similarly, one does not simply make validity claims with every act of
meaning; one implicitly takes on the obligation of providing reasons for these claims if
they are contested by others or of changing one's position if others give good reasons
for doing so. Meaningful actions are produced in relation to existential needs for being a
somebody (having a me) as well as for being trustworthy, responsible and accountable
in relation to at least some reference groups (the I feature of the claimed self).
Hence, the validity claims constitutive of meaning are inherently criticizable. Ultimately,
this means that people in everyday life themselves are capable of criticizing the
norms, identity repertoires, beliefs, and interpretive structures of their own culture.
Reconstructive analysis becomes a form of critical qualitative research when it brings to
light implicit and/or explicit forms of sociocultural criticism made [p. 743 ] by cultural
members themselves. Internal standards for critique include the relation of norms and
identity repertoires to human needs for self formation, development, and emancipation
as well as the relation of beliefs to actual experiences of an objectivated world.

Reconstruction of Semantic and Pragmatic

Structures
The validity horizon is the most precise, but never an exhaustive, articulation of
meaning for singular expressions. Thematic analysis of cultures, discourses, and
ideologies takes the usually backgrounded portions of typical meaningful expressions
to reveal interpretive generalities within a form of life. Such generalities are also
embedded within broadly distributed semantic and pragmatic structures that can be
investigated independently.
Semantic structures are instantiated through culturally distinctive uses of words and
phrases whose meanings depend on relations to other categories through relations
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of opposition, contrast, similarity, analogy, metaphor, and homology. Use of the word
dude within a particular group will have meaning dependent on how members implicitly
contrast the term with alternative words such as person, man, woman, and guy.
Each use of a word such as dude can instantiate a different semantic structure, and
insiders implicitly grasp which structure is in play according to the context of interaction.
Reconstructive analysis brings common semantic structures of this type into explicit
discourse. Ultimately, the meanings carried by instantiated semantic structures can be
fully articulated as validity horizons; the validity horizons of particular expressive acts
are delivered in part by the semantic structures instantiated by the acts.
Similarly, ways of talking and acting deliver meanings in culturally structured forms.
Insiders are aware of roles played by themselves and others through at least implicit
understandings of whole structures of roles that exist in relations of similarity and
contrast. The pragmatics of interactionproxemics, pacing, gesturing, patterns of
eye contact, and so onall deliver portions of the validity horizon through culturally
generalized structures. Reconstructive analysis can be used to explicate the distinctive
pragmatic structures of a form of life as well as the distinctive semantic ones.
Examples of the use of hermeneutic reconstructive analysis include Mark Dressman's
On the Use and Misuse of Research Evidence: Decoding Two States' Reading
Initiatives; Barbara Korth's Gendered Interpretations Veiled With Discourses of
Individuality; and Mary-Ann Hardcastle and colleagues'Carspecken's Five-Stage
Critical Qualitative Research Method: An Application to Nursing Research.
Phil Francis Carspecken

10.4135/9781412963909.n373
See also
Further Readings
(1996). Critical ethnography in educational research: A theoretical and
practical guide . New York: Routledge.
Carspecken, P. F.

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On the use and misuse of research evidence: Decoding two states'

reading initiatives . Reading Research Quarterly vol. 34 (1999) pp. 258285 http://
dx.doi.org/10.1598/RRQ.34.3.2
Dressman M.

(1979). What is universal pragmatics? In T. McCarthy (Ed. & Trans.),

Communication, evolution, society (pp. pp. 168). Boston: Beacon.
Habermas, J.

Hardcastle M.-A., Usher K.,

& Holmes C. Carspecken's five-stage critical qualitative research

method: An application to nursing research . Qualitative Health Research vol. 16 (2006)
pp. 151161 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1049732305283998
Gendered interpretations veiled with discourses of individuality .
Ethnography and Education vol. 2 ( no. 1) (2007) pp. 5773 http://
dx.doi.org/10.1080/17457820601159083
Korth B.

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