Hermeneutics

Hermeneutics is in simple words is the study of how we as individuals interpret our world around us. This can work closely with semiotics which is the study of signs. How this works closely is very simply the interpretation of the signs in our world. There of five parts of Hermeneutics that my Comm 403 Media Theory class covered, those five are; natural, normative, scientific, philosophical and depth.

Natural Hermeneutics is the everyday interpretation that we do. We will rarely not reflect on how we interpreted and brake down the central understanding to what we experienced in our multimedia lives. A clear example to look into is the Nixon/Kennedy debate Text as an art becomes a part of Hermeneutics as Normative Hermeneutics. In the Normative section we looked at "castes" of individuals in our society that are specialists in the interpretation of text. Some examples given were; priests, lawyers and judges. Running with one of the examples a lawyer, their specific job is to interpret laws which are in written text and use the knowledge at a greater understanding to win cases. A article of work I found which surprisingly had no author attached to the document has a statement that helps understand the importance of Normative Hermeneutics. "The inevitable result is some degree of alienation, as texts speak to a situation and an audience that no longer exists." (Unknown, 1).

Moving forward is scientific Hermeneutics which is the foundation of human or historical sciences. The goal of most science experiments can't be realized until you interpret results and findings which is one of the key steps in the scientific process. We take our data and are able to better interpret findings that are recorded to create a much more in depth understanding. Depth Hermeneutics is the "Hermeneutics of suspicion." It's basically interpreting text as something beyond its face value. A good blog post to look at is one about that gives an example with Obama and Depth Hermeneutics.

Finally we come to Philosophical Hermeneutics which basically states interpreting is not what we do but in fact we are the interpreters. Philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey expanded on hermeneutics saying that we will make unique interpretations for ourselves.