From Meaning to Method

This article explores aspects of the relation between language, meaning, and method in human science research. Phenomenology poses two distinct challenges: the thematic and the expressive dimensions of inquiry, which have implications for semantic and mantic, discursive and nondiscursive understanding. When we turn from thematic meaning to expressive meaning, then the question we ask turns from "What does the text speak about?" to "How does the text speak?" Bachelard, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Wittgenstein in different ways have employed the idea of mantic meaning to refer to that imagery of language that can bring about, in the reader, a phenomenological reverberation. The formative power of phenomenological texts lies precisely in this resonance that the word can effect. Research literature has focused primarily on the thematic aspects of human science method. Here, guiding principles of human science method will be explored that aim at strengthening the expressive-mantic dimension of phenomenology.