Theorizing as scholarly meaning-making practice: The value of a pragmatist theory of theorizing

Abstract

Theorizing is widely recognized as a key activity or process in scholarly research work. In many cases, theorizing is assumed to be part of the scholar’s analytical capacity, but there is a shortage of comprehensive explanations for how theorizing as practice actually generates the intersubjective meaning that is the primary purpose of using theory to describe and explain the empirical material. Drawing on pragmatist analytical philosophy and the idea that meaning is intersubjectively constituted within the semantics of everyday language, being accessible to all humans sharing a language, this article formulates a theory of theorizing that does not stop with the affirmative account that theorizing is a process that is contingent on personal beliefs and preferences. A theory of theorizing needs to provide a plausible ground for how empirical materials are described on basis of vocabularies that gradually shift from being more closely related to an everyday use of vernacular language, to more technically oriented descriptions that include theoretical concepts and categories. Based on these premises, preferably to be further developed, a theory of theorizing that demystifies how theory is introduced when analyzing empirical data is presented.