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Abstract

Designed as a reflection on and extension of Tine K. Jensen's Peirce-based ‘The Interpretation of Signs of Child Sexual Abuse’, this article brings out features of the processes and structures of interpretation that are not foregrounded in her article: abduction as hypothesis formation and pivotal semiosic act; the consequent intimate connection, indeed continuities, between ‘high-level’ interpretation and ‘lower-level’ perception; the nature of ‘problematic situations’ that elicit the work of interpretation; the skill structure of interpretation; the differential placement of interpreters over against one another and over against the ‘cases’ they are trying to decipher; the complex constitution of the interpreter as an already pre-structured and ‘interested’ party; and the general semiotic structure of every perceptual occasion that sets inquiry and interpretation in motion. Not only conceptual tools from Peirce's semiotic theory are utilized, but also those from Dewey's pragmatist theory of inquiry, Polanyi's theory of tacit knowing, Heidegger's analysis of the fore-structures of understanding, and Bühler's organon model of language.

Keywords

Dewey interpretation Peirce Polanyi semiotics signs

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References

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The Signs of Interpretation

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