Burnett, Gary

Dimensions of the "Mode of 'As-If'": Hermeneutics, Narrative, and Virtual Communities

Abstract

Paul Ricoeur's hermeneutics theory, as outlined in his 1976 volume Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning, provides a model for understanding the construction of community through the exchange of texts in virtual communities. However, Ricoeur's work remains explicitly theoretical, overtly rejecting efforts to use it as a basis for empirical analysis of specific instances of textual discourse. Expanding and revising my previous work on information exchange and hermeneutics in virtual communities, this paper will draw on Ricoeur's theories of narrative (as set forth in his Time and Narrative) as well as on other models of readerly construction of meaning (such as Wolfgang Iser's reader response theory) in order to develop a more robust description of the exchange of texts in virtual communities, and to propose a set of empirical methods for analyzing textual interactions within virtual communities.