Földessy Edina, Szűcs Alexandra, Wilhelm Gábor: Tabula 1. (Néprajzi Közlemények; Budapest, 1998)

SZ. KRISTÓF ILDIKÓ: Jákob rózsafája vagy frusztrált antropológusok? Az értelmezés hatalmáról és korlátairól

ILDIKÓ SZ. KRISTÓF Jacob's rosetree or frustrated anthropologists? This article attempts to account for the results of a series of experiments, which was carried out with postgraduate students. Taking up S. Fish' initiative the students had to interpret a word list containing unknown names. The main question was the following one: how does interpretation work? The main results supported the hypothesis that form and content of the actual interpretations are not accidental but came forth through an interplay of context and background knowledge. The author first describes her results in the framework of Austin and Searle's speech act theory and of Bourdieu's sociology. At the same time she draws attention to the fact that these models are unable to account for the mechanism through which conventions affect the content of interpretation. For further analysis the author uses the concept of ..interpretive community" that was introduced by Fish. She then enhances it with a notion of ..interpretive capital" as a conceptual tool, which depicts the beliefs acquired during the community formation. The article concludes that the interpretive community with its background knowledge and conventions play a more important role in the act of interpretation than the actual text itself. If this is so what can be told about those conventions and knowledge that should be responsible for the interpretations of ..texts" and events by anthropologists themselves? _ OO -