Kanygin G.V., Poltinnikova M.S., Koretskaya V.S. Problems of semantic reconstruction of a theoretical text in sociology. St. Petersburg Sociology Today. 2021. N. 16. P. 44-63. DOI:10.25990 ...

Текст статьи на сайте журнала URL: http://www.pitersociology.ru/ru/node/770 (дата обращения 12.01.2022)

Abstract

The article analyzes the reasons for the ambiguity of the reader’s understanding ofthe text of sociological theory, including: violation of the identity of the wordings oftheoretical concepts, the absence of an explicit indication of the context for theoreticalstatements, implicit presentation of semantic connections between individualstatements. The analysis is based on the tradition of semantic reconstruction ofnon-numerical evidence of informants, carried out by a sociologist in a qualitativestudy, and is carried out on the example of Arnason’s article, which considers theproblem of the controversy of theoretical concepts in the study of civilizations.The nature of the ambiguity of the semantic interaction between the author and thereader of sociological theory is explained based on the concept of dual knowledgeby Polanyi. We argue the necessity of the structural presentation by the author ofthe semantic connections of the theory at the stage of its creation. Today, suchconnections are put implicitly in text by its author under creation and remain tacitto the reader when reading it. The article proposes analytical coding as a tool forthe structural expression of sociological theory under its creation. This approachcombines in a single instrumental procedure the coding techniques of qualitativeresearch and the functionality of ontological methods for knowledge management.Thus, the social scientist gains conceptualization functionalities that are not availablewhen applying the traditional textual presentation of the theory. Among them thereare: management of ambiguous sociological definitions; tracking the contextualdependencies of verbal statements; checking the coherence of natural languagestatements evolved during theorizing; organization of teamwork of researchers fromdifferent subject areas.