Phenomenology, Ordinary Language, and the Methodology of the Social Sciences

Abstract

IN RECENT years discussions in the philosophy and of the social sciences have been dominated by critiques of positivism and, particularly, by challenges to positivism as the foundation for social scientific methodology. The attacks have come from many directions: phenomenology, ordinary language analysis, structuralism, critical theory, ethnomethodology, and hermeneutics. Although these approaches are by no means homogeneous, and the critiques of positivism formulated by each reflect this lack of homogeneity, their common attack on positivism as the foundation for social scientific has had a significant impact on the social sciences. It has, at the very least, put positivism on the defensive. But, more importantly, it has caused social scientists to begin to redefine, or, as one theorist put it, to restructure, their methodological assumptions.' It is this attempt to redefine the methodological foundation for the social sciences that forms the of this essay. It examines two critiques of positivism which have received considerable attention from social and political theorists: phenomenology and ordinary language analysis. Proponents of each school have claimed that their approach can supply a new for social scientific analysis. Some theorists have further claimed that the two approaches exhibit striking similarities which dictate a similar for the social sciences.2 The aim of this essay is to examine these claims through a careful comparison of the methodological prescriptions offered by each approach. It will be argued that although the approaches share a particular orientation to the problems of social scientific analysis, they differ widely in their ability to supply a coherent for the social sciences. Specifically, it will be argued that ordinary language analysis supplies only a from which the problems of the social sciences can be approached, while phenomenology supplies an adequate and comprehensive methodology. For this reason, it will be concluded that phenomenology supplies a reliable basis for the restructuring of social scientific in which we are now engaged while ordinary language analysis does not. Crucial to this thesis is the distinction between a perspective and a methodology as it applies to analysis in the social sciences. For an approach to qualify as a social scientific it must meet four criteria: first, it must define the subject matter of the social sciences; second, it must explain how that subject matter is constituted, that is, how the facts of social science become facts; third, it must provide the social scientist with precisely defined conceptual tools and procedures; and, fourth, it must define the limits of social scientific activity. A perspective, on the other hand, fulfills