Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No.3, 2020

The Discourse Context Model of Social Science Interpretation

(Abstract)

Yin Jie and Meng Hui

The existing scientific interpretation models are not easily applied to the basic question of the philosophy of the social sciences, i.e., whether social science interpretation falls under scientific interpretation. The basic reason for this is that most of these interpretation models are from the natural sciences, and the binary “subject-world” relationship behind them cannot cope with the changing social world. If we take the discourse context as the noumenon and thus transform the binary subject-world relationship into the ternary relationship between discourse, discourse context and the world, we can not only eliminate the subjective dependence of traditional context, but also demonstrate the normative relationship between the discourse context and the social world. Under this framework, while the discourse context model of social science interpretation need not assume that subject cognition remains the same or that the external world is constant, the interpretive relationship between theory and phenomenon is transformed into the relationship between discourse context and the world, and is thus applicable to both the social science interpretation and the natural science interpretation. The discourse context model shows that social science interpretation reveals the normative nature underlying social phenomena and its explanatory power comes from the normativity which discourse context puts out to the social world.