Analyse & Kritik

Journal of Philosophy and Social Theory

ohne Titel


1981 (3) Issue 1

Editorial

1. Zur programmatischen Konzeption von ANALYSE & KRITIK gehört der Versuch, eine Verbindung zwischen der Tradition der analytischen Philosophie und Wissenschaftstheorie und den kritischen Sozialwissenschaften herzustellen. Diese Absicht setzt voraus, daß die analytische Philosophie und Wissenschaftstheorie zumindest tendenziell als ein einheitliches Gebilde betrachtet werden kann, das von integrierenden Prinzipien und einer fortschreitenden Problemlösungstradition geprägt wird. Nur wenn das ...

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Table of Contents

Title: Zur Lage der Gegenwartsphilosophie in den USA
Author: Richard Rorty
Page: 3-22

Abstract: Analytic philosophy has taken for granted an account of the history of philosophy which jumps straight from Kant to Frege, leaving out Hegel and most of the nineteenth century. Such an understandig (e. g. , that of Reichenbach's Rise of Scientific Philosophy) depends upon viewing philosophy as the solution of certain discrete and specific "problems" raised by e. g. , discoveries in physics or mathematics. But the rejection of traditional positivist doctrines (those invoked by Reichenbach) brought about by the work of Wittgenstein, Quine, and others, makes this latter conception of philosophy difficult to sustain. Consequently, analytic philosophy has become a movement without a clear self-image and sense of mission. Its old ideological roots have been cut, and it now sustains itself through a sense of professionalism rather than by a sense of cultural or historical role. However, it still retains the Reichenbachian account of the history of philosophy. This has led to problems in American philosophy departments, particularly an unwillingness to regard Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and other "Continental" figures as being "really philosophers" and thus an unwillingness to include them in the curriculum.

Title: Inhaltsanalyse versus Linguistik
Author: Ingunde Fühlau
Page: 23-47

Abstract: Up to now no cooperation between linguists and content analysts has been achieved, although both disciplines have to cope with mostly the same problems related to language and communication. The article argues that this state of unrelated work is due to the fact that content analysis as a thoroughly American method was confronted with the linguistic school of "American Structuralism". The prime concern of this linguistic school and in particular its first two phases - Behaviorism and Distributionalism - was to establish scientific methods for linguistics. In the course of the development of American linguistics this led to a total exclusion of meaning or content from the field of linguistic analysis. The aims of linguistics and content analysis thus came to oppose each other. With the rise of transformational grammar meaning was reintegrated into linguistic work, thereby weakening the scientific claim. However since the beginning of the sixties content analysis has transformed into computer analysis, causing new problems to arise. Computerized content analysis is more than ever in need of a scientific theory of meaning - which, as linguistic endeavours have shown, is simply unfeasible. In order to promote a cooperation between linguists and content analysts a reformulation of the epistemologic basis for analyzing contents is inevitable.

Title: Inhaltsanalyse als Instrument der Sozialforschung. Theoretische Analyse und methodologische Kritik
Author: Klaus Merten
Page: 48-63

Abstract: It is assumed that content analysis is as important an instrument for the investigation of social reality as other instruments for this purpose (observation, interview). First a number of assumptions of Berelson's classic definition of content analysis is examined from this perspective and their problematical nature shown by referring to findings of the theory of communication and semiotics. The result of this analysis demands the understanding of content analysis as a method of investigation of social reality rather than as a model; the aim not being the description of a social object (of a text) but the inference from internal characteristics of a text to external characteristics of social reality. At the same time it is revealed that content analysis just as the customary instruments for the investigation of social reality is to be understood as a reciprocally interfering selective social process the achievement of which, namely the investigation of social reality, is only possible in actual fact at the cost of the reactivity of the instrument.

Title: Zum Verfahren der strukturalen Textanalyse - am Beispiel eines diskursiven Textes
Author: Michael Titzmann
Page: 64-92

Abstract: The present study is an attempt to demonstrate some of the possibilities and methodological rules of structural text analysis by applying the method to a text as an example. It is the aim to demonstrate especially in which way structural text analysis 1) works to include pragmatic aspects as well as cultural contexts of texts, 2) reconstructs, on the basis of a given text structure, a) tacit implications of texts, b) text-specific meanings of text terms.

Title: Inhaltsanalyse und strukturale Textanalyse
Author: Werner Früh
Page: 93-116

Abstract: The criticism of the original behavioristic basis of content analysis does not take into account the present state of research. The method has long since overcome its limitation, only to be able to code physical communication in the form of printed or written material. Every intersubjective demonstrable meaning now can be the object of content analysis. In its claim to be able to adequately describe the content of texts it is only apparently in competition with linguistic "structural text analysis". Due to the different research traditions from which they originated they were developed for different interests. While content analysis is the better method for hypothesis testing and selective description of large quantities of texts, structural text analysis is more efficient with respect to single and complex texts. One could image an optimal combination of both methods being possible.

Title: Bedeutung gleich Struktur? Zur Strukturalen Textanalyse M. Titzmanns
Author: Heinz-Helmut Lüger
Page: 117-123

Abstract: With his "Structural Text Analysis" M. Titzmann tries to give the basic notions of a semiotic theory of interpretation. In spite of this extensive and systematic representation, some problems arise: the additive conception of pragmatics, the static-referential notion of sign, the rigid definition of meaning, the rejection of any alternative interpretation. The possibility of application of the proposed method would depend to a large extent on these points.

Title: The Pareto Principle: Another View. Comment on Jürgen Backhaus: The Pareto Principle (ANALYSE & KRITIK 2/80)
Author: Warren J. Samuels
Page: 124-134

Abstract: The Pareto principle is in fact the fundamental concept of welfare economics. However, it has serious analytical and heuristic limits, is selective and conservative in nature and use, and is heavily normative notwithstanding the pretensions by advocates of its positive character.