


Content Analysis (CA) is a set of methods used for examining texts. I commence by outlining the conceptual foundations of CA articulated most recently by Klaus Krippendorff. He contends that in order for CA to be a reliable method, practitioners must cease understanding texts as ‘containers’ holding a single, inherent meaning. In contrast, the analyst and their interpretive context determine the inferences, and effectively the meaning, of texts. Outlining the hermeneutics of Hans–Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur, I challenge Krippendorff’s assertions, demonstrating that a hermeneutic approach renders visible necessary interpretive decisions which CA obscures. Hermeneutics thus oVers an important critique, alerting us to the limitations of CA, and the boundaries it must remain within if it is to remain useful.



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                                                        trópos • anno X • numero 1 • 2017 – ISBN 978-88-255-0482-8
                                                         DOI 10.4399/97888255048287 – pag. 111-127 (giugno 2017)




                                                De–fusing the Horizons?
                                               Content Analysis and Hermeneutics
                                                                               M.A.C. Jennings⇤




   abstract: Content Analysis (CA) is a set of methods used for examining texts. I
      commence by outlining the conceptual foundations of CA articulated most
      recently by Klaus KrippendorV. He contends that in order for CA to be a reliable
      method, practitioners must cease understanding texts as ‘containers’ holding a
      single, inherent meaning. In contrast, the analyst and their interpretive context
      determine the inferences, and eVectively the meaning, of texts.
          Outlining the hermeneutics of Hans–Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur,
      I challenge KrippendorV ’s assertions, demonstrating that a hermeneutic ap-
      proach renders visible necessary interpretive decisions which CA obscures.
      Hermeneutics thus oVers an important critique, alerting us to the limitations
      of CA, and the boundaries it must remain within if it is to remain useful.

   keywords: Content Analysis, Hermeneutics, Interpretation, Method, Big Word.




1. Introduction

The impetus for this paper emerged from a teaching experience. As I was
preparing to deliver a lecture in a sociological research methodology unit, I
commenced to read the required chapter that I had assigned my students
on the topic of Content Analysis (henceforth ‘CA’). The updated edition of
the unit textbook contained a new chapter on Content Analysis by Brendan
Churchill. Churchill defined CA in fairly open terms as ‘the formal study of
texts as a method of analysis.’ However, my interest was piqued when he
included the following four characteristics of CA:

    1) Texts have no inherent meanings in and of themselves. Understan-
       dings of the text are dependent on the reader or consumer, who
       brings their own interpretations to the texts.
   ⇤
       Lectures in Religious Studies at Murdoch University (M.Jennings@murdoch.edu.au).


                                                                                                             111
112     M.A.C. Jennings


      2) Texts can have multiple meanings and interpretations. This means
         that readers may find multiple meanings and interpretations within
         the one text, and that diVerent researchers may interpret the same
         text diVerently.
      3) Texts are reflective of contexts (political, social, cultural and econo-
         mic), in that they reflect characteristics of the producer (of the text),
         the reader and the analyst.
      4) Texts must be used to draw inferences about their properties as texts
         and, as importantly, in the social context in which they are situated
         (2013: 255).



    The first thing that struck me on reading this list is that it seemed to
contain some contradictions. Namely, assertion one seemed to me to be at
odds with assertion three — if texts have no inherent meaning, than how
can they be reflective of contexts, particularly the context of their producers?
While the logic of assertion two seemed internally valid, I wondered if it
would lead to ‘anything goes’ interpretations.
    Assertion one above — that texts have no inherent meaning — seemed
to me to present an interesting hermeneutical assumption about the nature
of interpretation. At first glance, it looks similar to what is often referred
to as ‘reader–response hermeneutics,’ most often associated with Stanley
Fish. While Fish’s approach, which I will discuss later, is more nuanced than
Churchill’s assertion, I could not help but wonder if another hermeneutic
approach would oVer CA practitioners more protection against ‘anything
goes’ interpretations. If practitioners of CA want to make claims about
how texts should be understood the meaning of texts, it would be pru-
dent to think about an interpretive approach that oVers both a conceptual
framework and perhaps a methodology that allows the possibility of such
claims. Reader–response approaches, particularly if practiced naively, tend
to lead to ‘anything goes’ interpretation, and thus do not appear to be
the answer here. Hermeneutics, particularly as articulated by Hans–Georg
Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur, oVers a history of deep engagement with the
challenges one encounters in attempting to interpret texts, which was
largely absent from the conceptual underpinning of CA.
    Churchill’s assertions are drawn from a text on CA written by Commu-
nications academic Klaus KrippendorV (2013). KrippendorV theorises CA as
an approach which eschews the authorial intention of a text’s creation or
production in favour of the meaning ascribed to the text by those who ‘read’
it — their ‘contexts of use.’ The fact that KrippendorV provides a detailed
and thoughtful articulation of the methodological underpinning of CA
                                                                    De–fusing the Horizons?         113


makes his work an ideal case study for the method.1 In what follows, I will
begin by outlining KrippendorV ’s articulation of the conceptual foundations
of CA, and then move on to discuss how hermeneutics oVers an important
critique of these. I will conclude with a discussion of the limitations of CA,
and subsequently the boundaries it must remain within if it is to be useful
as a method of textual analysis and explanation.


2. Klaus KrippendorV and the Conceptual Foundations of CA

KrippendorV begins with a brief history, tracing the beginnings of CA back
to 1743, to a religious controversy in Sweden surrounding the publication
of 90 Moravian hymns, entitled Sions Sånger (‘Songs of Zion’). When the
second edition of the hymns Sions Nya Sånger (‘New Songs of Zion’) were
due to be published in 1773, a conflict arose between the established Luthe-
ran church of Sweden and the Pietistic Moravian movement (Herrnhuter
Brüdergemeine), which had moved into Sweden from Germany in the 1730s
(Öhrberg 2008; Dovring 2009). The former perceived that the publication
and use of the hymns was promoting Moravian theology over the state
churches, leading to many attending Moravian churches outside their di-
stricts, as well as encouraging illegal private religious meetings. Lutheran
clergyman Johan Kumblaeus undertook a numerical analysis of the songs,
counting the references to the trinity and coming to the conclusion that the
Moravian hymns focused unduly on Jesus at the expense of the other two
members of the trinity. He also indicated that the frequency with which
pietistic themes appeared — such as Christ’s suVering and his love — ‘de-
viated from normal practice’ (Dovring 2009: 6). As can easily be imagined,
dissenters took issue with Kumblaeus’ method and conclusions for not
recognising that concepts can be expressed in several diVerent ways, and
the importance of context.
    The story illustrates some of the problems that can be associated with
the method. After all, counting occurrences of words does not disclose
meaning, which requires much more interaction with a text. Max Weber’s
(2009: 11) suggestion that sociologists should use scissors and compasses
to measure the quantitative changes that have occurred over time in the
content of newspapers runs into the same problems — the number of inches

      1. It is perhaps worth emphasizing at this point that my intention here is to analyse and critique
the theoretical underpinnings of CA. I am not attempting an empirical investigation of the ways that
particular practitioners of CA carry out their work — as for example Biernacki (2012) attempts in
relation to coding — as these will of course diVer in many ways from the “ideal type” presented by
KrippendorV ’s conceptual approach. Hence, KrippendorV ’s work is very valuable, as his is one of
the very few attempts to construct a rigorous theoretical framework for carrying out this method.
114     M.A.C. Jennings


devoted to a story, theme or demographic may not be meaningless, but the
content of those inches is surely important to understanding any changes
that may or may not have occurred. After all, how does noting column
inches indicate the ‘content’ of those inches — just what ‘Content’ analysis
might be presumed to be interested in? To his credit Weber does not stop
there, indicating that after this quantitative analysis has begun, the analyst
must next move to a more qualitative analysis to answer his questions.
   Perceiving some of the problems with the early attempts, KrippendorV
indicates that these are unsophisticated examples of approaches to CA, and
that his modern approach is more useful. He also rejects Bernard Berelson’s
classic definition of CA — ‘a research technique for the objective, systematic
and quantitative description of the manifest content of communication’
(1952: 18). Articulating the conceptual foundations of his alternative approach,
KrippendorV (2013: 28–31) outlines six features of texts which, apparently, he
regards as axiomatic. They are as follows:

      1) Texts have no inherent—that is, no reader–independent—qualities.
      2) Texts do not have single meanings that could be found, identified,
         described for what they are, or correlated with states of their sources.
      3) The meanings invoked by texts need not be shared.
      4) Meanings (contents) speak to something other than the given texts
      5) Texts have meanings relative to particular contexts, discourses, or
         purposes.
      6) The nature of text demands that content analysts draw specific
         inferences from a body of texts to their chosen context.

    Probably the most contentious of these are statements one, two and five.
Six could also be added, but when KrippendorV ’s rather idiosyncratic use
of ‘context’ is understood, the statement becomes more legible. I will come
to KrippendorV ’s understanding of context shortly, and describe how it fits
with his assertions that texts have no meaning independent of the reader.
    Assertion one has to be read in the context of KrippendorV ’s concern to
debunk what he refers to as the ‘container metaphor’ of content analysis.
KrippendorV seeks to move content analysis away from ‘naïve belief[s]’ that
content is contained in the text itself, requiring the interpreter to correctly
understand what is already there (2013: 26, 28).
    The reason KrippendorV desires to move away from this container ap-
proach to CA is his concern with method. He seeks to make CA a replicable
set of methods, which can be applied to texts in a systematic way. Krippen-
dorV is not concerned with ‘correct’ interpretations of texts themselves.
Assertion two and three make this clear — it is not important in CA that
analysts come up with a meaning that everyone shares, neither is the di-
                                                          De–fusing the Horizons?       115


scovery of a single meaning for a text desirable, or even possible. Rather,
KrippendorV is concerned with CA being able to apply a consistent set of
methods to texts. This is clear in his definition of CA: ‘a research technique
for making replicable and valid inferences from texts (or other meaning-
ful matter) to the contexts of their use’ (2013: 24). The meaning of texts
themselves is secondary to this. Method is actually more important than
meaning of texts, and in this sense KrippendorV ’s vision of CA runs in the
opposite direction of most of hermeneutics throughout history.
   Another important diVerence in KrippendorV ’s articulation of method
and traditional hermeneutics is in regard to the way he uses the term
“context.” In hermeneutics, and in common usage, context is understood
to refer to the production of the text, and perhaps the author’s meaning
or intention. In contrast, KrippendorV does not mean the context of the
text’s production, but ‘the context of the text’s use’ — this is the context of
the analyst, and anyone else interacting with the text. This fits neatly with
his understanding that texts have no inherent meaning. For KrippendorV,
the analyst must be able to fully describe the conditions under which they
interpret the text, as these will determine the results of the analysis, and
guard against ‘anything goes’ interpretations (2013: 30).
   At this point, KrippendorV explicitly defines CA as diVerent from a
hermeneutic approach:

   One can surely explore the meanings that come to mind while reading a text, follo-
   wing the threads of inferences to wherever they may lead, or engaging in so–called
   fishing expeditions. Hermeneutical, interpretive, and ethnographic approaches to
   reading cherish such open–endedness. However, when research is motivated by
   specific questions, analysts can proceed more expeditiously from sampling relevant
   texts to answering given questions. Content analysts who start with a research
   question read texts for a purpose, not for what an author may lead them to think
   or what they say in the abstract’ (2013: 37, emphasis added).

   This approach of commencing with a research question is also more
deductive than hermeneutic approaches. Furthermore, KrippendorV is
concerned to ground CA as an empirical method. The analyst makes truth
claims in framing the research question, and these truth claims can be
supported or invalidated by analysis. Analysts can ‘compensate’ for the fact
that they cannot directly observe — as per the natural sciences — by the
rigorous application of this method. Texts are thus analysed by counting —
‘counting is what analysts do’ (2013: 38) — to determine answers to carefully
constructed research questions and pre–existing categories, or codes.
   Ostensibly, then, CA as conceptualised by KrippendorV is not primarily
concerned with the meaning of texts, but rather answering quantitative
questions about the content of the text — which does not take us much
116      M.A.C. Jennings


further than Father Kumblaeus counting references to the trinity or Weber
advocating the use of scissors and compasses on newspapers. However, it be-
comes clear that he actually wants to be able to draw some inferences about
meaning as well when he returns to a discussion about his rather idiosyn-
cratic understanding of context. As we have noted, context for KrippendorV
refers to context of use — and particularly the context of the analyst:
      In a content analysis, the context explains what the analyst does with the texts;
      it could be considered the analyst’s best hypothesis for how the text came to be,
      what they mean, what they can tell or do. In the course of a content analysis, the
      context embraces all the knowledge that the analyst applies to given texts, whether
      in the form of scientific theories, plausibly argued propositions, empirical evidence,
      grounded intuitions, or knowledge of reading habits (2013: 38).

   It seems, then, that KrippendorV is not entirely willing to abandon
meaning, and thus whether he is aware of it or not his method for carrying
out CA is attempting to address (at least in part) hermeneutic questions. He
next moves to a more specific discussion of his analytical method, based
on the primary concern that such analysis ‘model’ the text’s context of use
(2013: 40), which is broader than the analyst’s own context. We can infer
from this that KrippendorV ’s understanding of context is not only that of
analyst, but also that of those who make use of the text.
   KrippendorV proposes that, based on research questions and his under-
standing of context — both of analyst and the text’s use — the analyst moves
on to make ‘inferences’ in relation to the text (2013: 41–43). This proceeds
along scientific lines — moving from the text to hypothesis which explains
the ‘data’ of the text, and the establishment that a proposed hypothesis
explains the data best. However, he continues by saying:
      Content analysts are in a similar position of having to draw inferences about
      phenomena that are not directly observable, and they are often equally resourceful
      in using a mixture of statistical knowledge, theory, experience, and intuition to
      answer their research questions from available texts (2013: 43).

   Such reliance on ‘intuition’ seems at odds with a scientific approach, and
suggests a need to make an ‘informed guess’ as to the meaning or content
of texts, or at least to the significance of data. To be fair, KrippendorV ’s
method has not required a naïve requirement that the analyst be ‘objective’
and come to the texts with no assumptions or preconceptions — quite the
opposite, as the deductive method he describes requires pre–judgement.
   We return to more scientific ground with KrippendorV ’s insistence
that CA should be “validatable” in principle (2013: 44). Validation can only
come from a mixed–method approach in which CA is triangulated with
another method. For example, KrippendorV suggests that a CA purporting
                                                    De–fusing the Horizons?   117


to describe the impact of particular television advertisements could be
combined with a survey of a sample of viewers. This can be validated in
principle because such a survey is possible, even if it is not carried out. This
represents a concern that decisions about the significance of texts not rest
only with the analyst, but can be verified empirically in another way. This
is another way of guarding against the possibility of an ‘anything goes’
analysis.
    These are the main features of KrippendorV ’s conceptual understanding
of the method of CA. Other recent approaches to CA — most particularly
Roberto Franzosi’s ‘story grammar’ approach, in which he attempts to code
texts by means of the linguistic–based categories of the text itself — are
certainly diVerent in the sense that he is attempting to base analysis on the
text, rather than preconceived research questions set by the analyst. Thus,
his approach appears more inductive, but is still an attempt to organise texts
into quantifiable categories (Franzosi 2004: 60–61). Other, less comprehen-
sive outlines (e.g. Semler 2001; Devi Prasad 2008; Sproule 2010; Churchill
2013) share this in common — the attempt to break texts into thematic
categories which appear repeatedly, or even to count occurrences of words
or themes appearing in the text. They may lack a detailed articulation of the
epistemological underpinnings that KrippendorV (to his credit) provides,
but attempt to do similar things — separating the content of texts into
thematic codes, and then analysing the content of texts in order to address
particular, pre–determined questions.
    KrippendorV attempts to outline a method with empirical verifiability
revolving around the significance of a text’s ‘context of use,’ but that also
facilitates truth claims about the meaning (and therefore the “content”) of
texts. In contrast, hermeneutics, a branch of philosophy concerned with un-
derstanding, has historically focused on the author’s intent as determinative
of meaning. In the next section we turn to Hans–Georg Gadamer and Paul
Ricoeur, two hermeneutic philosophers who worked to render visible the
impact of the world of the reader on interpretation and the tensions in the
creative process of understanding.


3. Hans–Georg Gadamer: the Fusions of Horizons

Hans–Georg Gadamer (1900–2002) was a student of the phenomenological
philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889–1976). From Heidegger, Gadamer in-
herits a concern for understanding the ontological ground of the human
sciences, rather than simply an interest in constructing a method for achie-
ving understanding. For Heidegger, we cannot divorce ourselves from our
being in the world, what is necessary is to bring this to the understanding
118      M.A.C. Jennings


of the text. Hence Heidegger’s famous comment on the hermeneutic circle
— what is important is not trying to get out of the circle, but to come into it
the right way (2010: 148).
    For Gadamer, all understanding is interpretation, which allows experien-
ce to come into words. Whoever has language ‘has the world,’ because
the world is the totality of meaningful relations. What is not meaningful
is the Umwelt (habitat) — not interpreted and meaningless (1975: 402, 411).
As language is inherited — all humans live within a ‘linguistic tradition’ —
therefore the idea that we could be neutral or ‘objective’ is wrongheaded.
We are shaped by this tradition — the culture, society and history we inherit
by being born into it and living in it (1975: 351). This is what we bring to
interpreting texts, and indeed the world.
    In his attempts to articulate how understanding happens, Gadamer (1975:
269–270) introduced the concept of “horizon” — the range of one’s vision
from a particular vantage point. The author of a text has a horizon, the
text itself has a horizon, which may be diVerent from that of the author
(hence, the author’s meaning is important in hermeneutics, but not the
whole meaning of any text). Finally, the reader of the text has his or her (or
their) own horizon also. In interpretation of texts, the reader’s horizon and
the text’s horizon are fused — a new horizon is formed. Language can also
change, as new truth emerges. This happens not primarily through reason
and science, but through participation in the hermeneutical process — the
fusion of horizons. In the fusion of horizons, the reader or interpreter’s
understanding of the world is enriched, changed — through the process of
‘discovering meaningful relationships of being within the text’ ( Jensen 2007:
141).
    The fusion takes place when the diVerent horizons, which we imagine
to be entirely separate, are brought together in the act of understanding. In
fact, they are not entirely separate. The horizon of the interpreter him or
herself cannot be formed without the past, and thus may share something
in common with the horizon of the text or author — particularly if it is a
culturally significant text. Also, of course, the reader and text often share
a common linguistic tradition. Gadamer prefers to talk of a ‘fusion’ rather
than the formation of a seamless horizon in the act of interpretation because
he perceives the task of hermeneutics is not to eradicate tensions, but to
bring them out (1975: 273). As he states:

      The place between strangeness and familiarity that a transmitted text has for us is
      that intermediate place between being a historically intended separate object and
      being part of a tradition. The true home of hermeneutics is in this intermediate
      area (Gadamer 1975: 263).
                                                      De–fusing the Horizons?   119


     This tension is important, because it is in this space that new truth can
emerge. ‘Something comes into being that had not existed before and that
exists from now on . . . something emerges that is contained in neither of
the partners by himself ’ (1975: 419).
     While Gadamer did not address CA directly, in regard to quantitative
analysis he was aware of the interpretive claims made by those who used
statistics. Gadamer was scathing of claims to objectivity in interpretation —
those who contend that statistics speak in the ‘language of facts’ ignore that
‘the questions these facts answer and which facts would begin to speak if
other questions were asked are hermeneutical questions’ (Gadamer 1976:
11).
     This is important in view of the research questions which KrippendorV
proposes as the starting point of CA. KrippendorV ’s deductive approach
does not dismiss hermeneutical questions, but shifts them, from the inte-
raction with the text itself to the questions that are being asked, which form
a part of the analyst’s horizon brought to the text. Additionally, the process
of analyzing results itself — often referred to as ‘interpretation’ — is thorou-
ghly and ineluctably hermeneutic. There is no way around hermeneutics
for Gadamer.
     Gadamer has been criticised for not oVering enough in the way of a
method for interpreting texts. Certainly if one were hoping to actually ‘do’
hermeneutics, Gadamer might provide a conceptual foundation, but not
much in the way of getting started. French hermeneutical philosopher Paul
Ricoeur can oVer us such a starting point, and to his work we now turn.


4. Paul Ricoeur: Interpretation Theory and the Threefold Mimesis

Paul Ricoeur (1913–2005) was a French philosopher who studied the work
of Edmund Husserl and Heidegger during his time as a prisoner of war.
Working independently from Gadamer, his thought nevertheless developed
in similar ways. Ricoeur oVers more than Gadamer in the way of a critical
method for explaining texts. Firstly, he presents a working definition of
hermeneutics as ‘the theory of the operations of understanding in their
relation to the interpretation of texts’ (1981: 43). He also attempts to reconcile
the opposition between ‘explanation’ and ‘understanding.’ As Thiselton
(2009: 249–250) notes, explanation provides the interpreter with a ‘checking
device,’ necessary given the possibility of error. While Ricoeur would
agree with KrippendorV that there can be multiple meanings of texts, this
does not mean any interpretation is as good as any other. As he states, ‘an
interpretation must not only be probable, but more probable than another’
(1981: 213).
120   M.A.C. Jennings


    While Ricoeur advocated the use of historical–critical methods to un-
cover the intent of the author, he accepted that critical explanation of texts
did not end there. Rather, this must be interrogated by a hermeneutics
of suspicion (1970: 27). In taking a suspicious approach, we are alerted to
what may be behind the world of the author, of which they may have been
unaware. Ricoeur (1970: 32) regarded Freud, Nietzsche and Marx as the
‘masters of suspicion,’ because they helped the interpreter lay bare what
was hidden even to the text’s creator. For Freud, a text reveals the suppressed
desire of the author; for Nietzsche, the will to power or suppression (by the
powerless); and for Marx, false consciousness. Therefore, there is a ‘surplus
of meaning’ in the text — it means more than the author intended.
    Suspicion alerts the interpreter to what is behind the texts, but inter-
pretation is by no means finished. The next step is to return to a critical,
or ‘second’ naivety (1970: 28–29). When we approach a text, we read at a
superficial level and develop a naïve understanding: an informed guess — or
perhaps even uninformed — about what the text is about. This constitutes
the interpreter’s pre–understanding, which Ricoeur refers to as starting
‘in front of the text.’ Next we move behind the text, using the tools at our
disposal (such as historical–critical methods, suspicion) to arrive at a critical
explanation. Once this critical explanation is reached, the interpreter returns
to the ‘front of the text,’ reading again with a critically informed ‘naivety.’
    In articulating what is happening in reaching this critical understanding,
Ricoeur (1984: 54–71) proposes a threefold mimetic process of interpretation.
This has significant commonalities with Gadamer’s fusion of horizons.
Mimesis1 or ‘prefiguration,’ is the pre–understanding or pre–story we bring
to interpreting a text. We do not attempt to divorce ourselves from this
pre–story, but try to perceive what it is — to get into the circle the right
way. Mimesis2 , or ‘configuration,’ is the world of the text. However, it is
more than that, constituting ‘an author’s imaginative construction of a text,
particularly the emplotment, and the reader’s construal of a narrative world
of the text’ (Stiver 2001: 68). In other words, this is our immersion in the text,
and the world we create in interaction with it. Mimesis3 , or ‘re–figuration,’
is similar to Gadamer’s ‘fusion of horizons.’ In the coming together of the
world of the reader and the text, something new is created.
    Interpretation for Ricoeur is a creative process, and it would be impossi-
ble to confine a text’s meaning within one person’s interpretation. However,
this is not the same as an ‘anything goes’ approach, because interpretations
compete in the ‘process of validation.’ In other words, diVerent interpre-
tations are presented, supported by their advocates, and more probable
interpretations are accepted, less probable rejected. Ricoeur describes this
process thus:
                                                             De–fusing the Horizons?        121


   It is true that there is always more than one way of construing a text, it is not
   true that all interpretations are equal and may be assimilated to so–called ‘rules of
   thumb.’ The text is a limited field of possible constructions. The logic of validation
   allows us to move between the two limits of dogmatism and scepticism. It is always
   possible to argue for or against an interpretation, to confront interpretations, to
   arbitrate between them, to seek for an agreement, even if this agreement remains
   beyond our reach (1981: 213).

    Ricoeur and Gadamer provide us with an approach which attempts to
come to meaning through a process of engaging a text’s creator, the text
itself and the interpreter. It would seem that KrippendorV ’s approach to
CA mutes or ignores the first two of these, and attempts to arrive at a valid
assessment and interpretation of a text’s content with only the third — the
interpreter or analyst and his or her approach. The potential problems with
this approach are the subject of the final section.


5. Defusing the Horizons? CA, Interpretation and Truth Claims

In addressing the issue of establishing truth claims as an outcome of analysis,
KrippendorV distinguishes between ‘reliability’ and ‘validity’ in CA — the
former concerns ensuring that method can be duplicated under various
conditions and concluded with ‘substantial agreement of results.’ Validity
is the extent to which the claims made in CA can be said to be true (2013:
268). Truth claims are supported not by an appeal to authorial intent, but
by external validation via triangulation with other methods, independent
evidence or agreement with established theory — what KrippendorV refers
to as ‘empirical validity’ (2013: 331). However, the conclusion cannot be
escaped that interpretative decisions are still necessary. If, as KrippendorV
indicates, analysts from diVerent paradigms and disciplines are likely to
come up with diVerent results, which should be deemed to be ‘true?’ In
regard to this latter objection, KrippendorV responds with what he calls
‘semantic validity,’ in which ‘the categories of an analysis of texts correspond
to the meanings these texts have within the chosen context,’ remembering
that his understanding of context is that of the analyst, not that of the text
(2013: 335).
    This is, of course, not the first or only approach to texts which eVectively
disregards authorial intent. Reader–response criticism is a similar attempt.
Its most well–known exponent, Stanley Fish, articulates the view that it is
the reader of a text’s understanding which is definitive in interpretation:
‘the reader’s response is not to the meaning; it is the meaning’ (1980: 3,
italics original). For Fish, interpreting the text shapes the text as they are
read, and are not merely strategies applied after the fact to discover what
122    M.A.C. Jennings


was already there (1980: 13). Fish’s view is nuanced by his commitment
to interpretive ‘communities’ — the idea that interpreters are influenced
in their hermeneutic by everything that constitutes their personal history,
their culture and everything that goes into what we might call the ‘horizon’
of the interpreter. Further, and more significantly, Fish is uninterested in
the kind of external validation KrippendorV is advocating, but attempts to
demonstrate the plausibility of his interpretation by persuasion. His defence
against the possibility of ‘anything goes’ interpretation is the link to the text
itself, and so this represents another diVerence in Fish’s approach — while
the horizon of the author may be absent, the horizon of the text itself is not
(1980: 356–360).
    KrippendorV ’s focus on the horizon of the interpreter and the world
of reception displays little of the nuance evident in Fish’s understanding,
nor is this surprising. He is, after all, concerned with finding a method
for carrying out analysis that can be replicated, and from this springs his
concern for articulating the conditions of interpretation. This is entirely
consistent with a positivist approach: in order to repeat an experiment, the
conditions under which said experiment takes place must be described, and
how they may have influenced the results must be taken into account.
    As we have noted, one of the advantages KrippendorV notes in the de-
ductive, pre–determined questions approach of CA is its capacity to facilitate
work with massive volumes of texts. This has led to so–called “Big Text” or
“Text–mining” approaches to analysis, which rely on computer program-
mes to count word occurrences, map possible relationships between words,
clauses and sentences, and even subsequently identify themes in many texts
simultaneously. Such tools are known as “computer–aided qualitative di-
scourse analysis software” (CAQDAS). While Nvivo has been the industry
standard for semi–automated qualitative data coding for some time, recent
CAQDAS applications developed at the University of Queensland — known
as “Leximancer” and “Discursis” — oVer the researchers a “visual–first
approach” of thematic and sequential relationships within large numbers
of texts (Angus, Rintel & Wiles 2013). That is to say, they allow rapid CA
on a much larger scale, as small teams or even solo researchers can code
thousands of texts.
    In describing the capacity of Leximancer, Angus, Rintel, and Wiles (2013:
262) note that the programme dispenses with the need for researchers to
“iteratively design lists of concepts and codes” — the software generates
these automatically. One of the advantages of this, according to the authors,
is that the codes are “statistically reliable and reproducible.” The visual–first
nature of the software results in “plots” of the occurrences of words and ph-
rases in texts, displaying often mentioned words and phrases in large nodes,
less articulated words and phrases in smaller nodes, and using connecting
                                                    De–fusing the Horizons?   123


lines to indicate relationships between these (Angus, Rintel & Wiles 2013:
263).
    The authors take care to point out that the software does not replace
human analysts: rather, “visually model[ling] text data for interpretation by
a researcher” (Angus, Rintel, & Wiles 2013: 261). It could be argued that
all that is being made available to analysts are some of the same Big Data
tools already used across the disciplines, whereby the researcher has access
to lightning fast algorithmic search engines that facilitate vast quantities of
information at their fingertips.
    However, it is not only at the end of the process, where it comes time for
the human beings to sit in front of the data and make some sense of it, that
hermeneutic decisions must be made. Nodes may indeed mark how many
times a word or phrase appear in a conversation, interview or report — but
knowing how many times something occurs tells us very little about the
meaning thereof. This is evident in the application of Leximancer to spee-
ches by former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, taking the form of a
quiz whereby readers can guess whether Abbott spoke more about themes
such as “Jobs,” “The Budget” or “Asylum Seeker Boats” before or after his
election victory in 2013. Readers can then compare their guesses with a
graph plotting the number of times Abbott mentioned these concepts, and
when (ABC 2015).
    While knowing these numbers is suggestive, without the context of the
speeches themselves, it is impossible to determine how the concepts were
used, whether they were spoken of positively or negatively, or really what
to make of the quantities at all. Further, the process whereby it was decided
that these particular themes should be meaningful, as opposed to other
things the former Prime Minister may or may not have said, is hopelessly
obscured. All we are left with is our own interpretations of a set of numbers
— what they mean in our own “contexts of use.”
    As we have observed, the goal of content analysts is to draw inferences
from the content of texts to their contexts of use. However, this process is
riddled with interpretive decisions and questions. Understanding any social
action — in this case, understanding both the meaning of a text’s creation
as well as its reception — is, as Max Weber articulates so well, an interpreti-
ve process. In articulating the heart of his sociological method, Verstehen,
Weber explains that in order to interpret the significance of people’s actions
(in this case, this applies to both producers and consumers of texts), it is
necessary through a process of empathy to attempt to view the world from
the point of view of the one who we are trying to understand (1978: 4–6,
8–9, 11). Weber then famously describes the various “ideal types” of orienta-
tion to action: namely instrumental rationality, value–rationality, aVectual
and traditional, all of which can be oVered as explanations for behaviour
124   M.A.C. Jennings


(1978: 24–26). Thus, whether we attempt to understand texts in terms of the
context of the producer or the context of its reception, interpretation and
understanding is an inescapable part of the process.
    Even if CA is triangulated with another empirical method, such as a
questionnaire, interpretive decisions will have to be made as to what the
appropriate questions to ask are, and this is true at all stages — from the
deductive questions being asked prior to engaging in CA, to the survey
questions which are to confirm or disconfirm the analyst’s conclusions. As
to interpreting numerical results, Tucker (1965: 165) points out that under-
standing is necessary in making meaning from statistical correlations also.
In short, hermeneutics is part of the practice of CA, whether practitioners
are aware of this or not.
    What is the alternative? Largely that is a topic for another paper, but at this
stage I would suggest doing hermeneutics. That is, reading and interpreting
texts, learning as much as possible about what may have influenced the
author or authors of the text, who it was written for, what intention was
behind this (horizon of the author), the language and genre of the text
(horizon of the text) and the worldview, interests, intentions and myopias of
the interpreter (horizon of the reader), and then oVering an interpretation.
As Richard Biernacki (2014: 173, 185) suggests, a humanist approach would
declare the position of the interpreter and footnote the other possible
interpretations of the data, inviting the reader into the process whereby
validation through the “conflict of interpretations” has taken place. This
is entirely consistent with the hermeneutic approach, one in which an
interpretation is oVered, one must be willing to defend this interpretation
and/or modify it if a convincing case for another interpretation is oVered.
    This is not to say that CA has no usefulness as a set of methods, if it
remains within methodological and epistemological boundaries — that is,
if analysts do not try to do too much with the method. In his overview
of CA, Steve Semler (2001) is modest in his claims about the utility of the
method. Firstly, CA can be used to determine authorship, much like textual
criticism in Biblical and Classical studies. Analysts would use CA to identify
commonly used terms and phrases, thus building — or demolishing —
a case for common authorship of diVerent documents. Secondly, Semler
proposes that CA is useful for ‘examining trends and patterns in documents,’
presumably through analysis of frequency of the appearance of words,
phrases and themes. Finally, Semler suggests that CA can be ‘an empirical
basis for monitoring shifts in public opinion’ as well as evaluating how
well current practices align with stated goals (for example, in the case of
mission statements). In a similar vein, John R. Hall (2014: 247) suggests that
quantitative findings form the basis of “thin description,” which “can be an
important springboard to hermeneutic enquiry.”
                                                      De–fusing the Horizons?   125


    However, as I have argued throughout this paper, practitioners of CA do
in fact have to be concerned with the meaning of texts and not just in the
method by which they are interpreted. Indeed, this is entirely reasonable
— a method sans content is an empty frame. Also, while CA purports to
relate only to the meanings of texts as held within their contexts of use
(rather than contexts of creation), practitioners of CA must make interpretive
judgements concerning what this is, based on their intuition and reason.
    If analysts limit themselves to identifying trends or determining author-
ship, then CA as outlined by KrippendorV has some legitimate uses as a
method — as long as practitioners perceive the hermeneutical decisions
they themselves must make during implementation. However, as I have
stated, for the purposes of understanding what texts mean, CA as advocated
by KrippendorV is inadequate. The process of eVectively ‘de–fusing’ the
horizons latent in CA merely robs the interpreter of critical perspectives
that facilitate reasonable interpretation.
    Hermeneutics is unlikely to facilitate the mass analysis of thousands
of texts in rapid fashion, and thus interpreters will lose the eYciency CA
claims to oVer. What is gained is a critical understanding and method which
takes seriously the task of interpretation and meaning making, as well as the
role of human beings themselves in producing meaningful communications
which are interpreted by other human beings in meaningful ways. CA may
have promised a short–cut to this diYcult and time consuming process, but
unless practitioners have certain narrowly defined goals for their research,
the method only succeeds in rendering necessary hermeneutical decisions
invisible.


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