The article describes some examples of empirical investigations that can be used to “recognize” what Stanley Fish called interpretive communities and to discuss what constitutes identifiable differences between them. The examples fall into three groups, depending upon what kinds of data have been collected and analyzed in the investigations: written protocols describing responses and interpretations; the use of statistical analysis and verbal scales to reach beyond or below the verbalized response; and studies of norms and conventions which are held by or known by a group of readers before a particular response has been formed.
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