Thursday, 2 August 2012

The Aims of Interpretation… The Nature of Interpretation is to Construe

HIRSCH, E.D. (1976) The Aims of Interpretation. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.


“As a first step, I propose that interpretive theories should not lump together the descriptive and the normative aspects of interpretation; the theorists should disengage the descriptive dimension of hermeneutics, which concerns its goals. For the goals of interpretation are determined ultimately by value-preferences, and interpreters do not exhibit more agreement in their than the generality of people. (…) Stated bluntly, the nature of interpretation is to construe from a sign-system something more than its physical presence. That is, the nature of text is to mean whatever we construe it to mean. I am aware that theory should try to provide normative criteria for discriminating good from bad, legitimate from illegitimate constructions of a text, but mere theory cannot change the nature of interpretation.” (p75)
 

Annotation:
Hirsch apologises for stating bluntly that, “the nature of interpretation is to construe from a sign-system something more than its physical presence.” (p75). In this is the act of meaning-making that a designer intends to communicate through the visual communication in the design – where the interpreted meaning can mean whatever the designer construes it to mean. The sign system they use is semiotics, the interpretation is controlled by the visual communication decisions in the design, and how it is interpreted can be understood if it is approached phenomonologically. This is where the hermeneutic circle is important as it reveals the specifics of the experience. This may be descriptive, but presented through a Visual Communication Phenomenological Methodology it can visualise the internalised. 

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