Notes on the Specification of "Meaning" in Schutz

Author(s): Lester Embree

Source: Human Studies, Vol. 14, No. 2/3 (1991), pp. 207-218
Published by: Springer
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20010930
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Human Studies 14: 207-218,1991.
? 1991 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

Notes on the specification of "meaning" in Schutz

LESTER EMBREE
Florida Atlantic University, Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology,
Boca Raton, FL 33431

"Meaning" is surely the central expression in Alfred Schutz's oeuvre. At the

same time, it is specified in a variety of ways, sometimes somewhat
implicitly. While a full explication might fill a volume, a few remarks may
be of value for the interpretation and critique of his thought and in research
inspired by it.
(1) Regarding "meaning", Schutz writes as follows early in his
"Fragments on the Phenomenology of Music."

A piece of music is a meaningful context. It is meaningful to the com?

poser; it can be understood as meaningful by the listener; and it is a task
for the interpreter to bring about the correct meaning. Applied to music,
the terms "meaning," "context," "understanding," and "interpretation"
are used, however, in a specific way which is different from other
meaningful systems, such as languages.

Music is an instance of a meaningful context without reference to a

conceptual scheme and, strictly speaking, without immediate reference to
the objects of the world in which we live, without reference to the
properties and functions of these objects. Music does not have a repre?
sentative function. (Musical notation, of course, does have a repre?
sentative function.) Neither a piece of music, nor a single theme, has a
semantic character. (Schutz, 1976: 23; cf. Schutz, 1970: 93-96)

"Meaning" comes in contexts. One might be inclined to construe it as

equivalent to signification, i.e. the sort of "meaning" that words and
sentences have, but this and other passages show that the linguistic sort of
"meaning" is but one species of the genus. Musical "meaning" is another
species. No doubt there are still other species. For the purposes of this
essay, "meaning" will be expressed in so-called scare quotes in order to
raise the question for the reader of what sort of "meaning" is at issue.
Furthermore, "meaning" will on occasion be qualified here as linguistic and
non-linguistic. The linguistic is a species of the symbolic for Schutz, but it
is the most prominent species and deserves emphasis. That linguistic

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208

"meaning" typically signifies or refers to non-linguistic "meaning" ought

not to mislead the careful reader any more than how social-scientific
linguistic "meaning" can refer to or signify both the linguistic "meaning" of
everyday language and everyday non-linguistic "meaning."
Schutz uses "construct" in one place in a way that seems like "meaning,"
but more like specifically linguistic than non-linguistic "meaning." The
following passage is concerned with how the social sciences differ from the
natural sciences.

But the facts, events, and data before the social scientist are of an entirely
different structure. His observational field, the social world, is not
essentially structureless. It has a particular meaning and relevance
structure for the human beings living, thinking, and acting therein. They
have preselected and preinterpreted this world by a series of common
sense constructs of the reality of daily life, and it is these thought-objects
which determine their behavior, define the goals of their action, the
means available for attaining them - in brief, which help them to find
their bearings within their natural and socio-cultural environment and to
come to terms with it. The thought objects constructed by the social
scientists refer to and are founded upon the thought objects constructed
by the common-sense thought of man living his everyday life among his
fellow-men. Thus, the constructs used by the social scientists are, so to
speak, constructs of the second degree, namely constructs of the con?
structs made by the actors on the social scene, whose behavior the
scientist observes and tries to explain in accordance with the procedural
rules of his science. (Schutz, 1962: 2)

If these "constructs" are linguistic "meanings," then those of the first degree
would be expressed in ordinary language, those of the social scientists
would be expressed in scientific language, which differs from ordinary
language at least with respect to technical terminology, and there is also a
question what the first degree constructs are constructs of or about. Perhaps
it is the "particular meaning and relevance structure" mentioned early in
this passage and perhaps those are non-linguistic.
(2) The most frequent explicit specification of "meaning" in Schutz is
expressed with the adjectives "subjective" and "objective." He himself had
at least one theoretical hesitation about these qualifiers:

It was Max Weber who made this distinction ["between the subjective
and objective meaning of human actions, human relations, and human
situations"] the cornerstone of his methodology. Subjective meaning, in
this sense, is the meaning which an action has for the actor or which a
relation or situation has for the person or persons involved therein;
objective meaning is the meaning the same action, relation, or situation
has for anybody else, be it a partner or observer in everyday life, the
social scientist, or the philosopher. The terminology is unfortunate
because the term "objective meaning" is obviously a misnomer, in so far

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 209

as the so-called "objective" interpretations are, in turn, relative to the

particular attitudes of the interpreters and, therefore, in a certain sense,
"subjective". (Schutz, 1964: 275, cf. 227)

One signification of "subjective" is equivalent to "relative to the particular

attitude of the interpreter" and in that signification all "meaning," non
linguistic as well as linguistic, it may be added, is subjective. In another
signification, however, "meaning" is subjective when it is the "meaning" of
an action, relation or situation for the actor and objective when it is the
"meaning" of the action, etc. i.e. for someone other than the actor. Schutz
here mentions four other standpoints, namely those of a partner, an observer
in everyday life, a social scientist, and a philosopher. These could be
specified further, e.g., with respect to the difference between pure and
applied social science. The reader must then be alert to how the concept
expressed by "objective meaning" is subspecified in a given context.
Furthermore, it may be noted that "objective" unfortunately connotes the
real, scientific, intersubjective, etc. and "subjective" connotes the private,
inscrutible, illusory, etc. If there were no alternatives, one could learn, as
many have, to comprehend these qualifiers in their technical Weberian
Schutzian significations. On a previous occasion, the present author
suggested that "insider" and "outsider" "construal" be substituted for the
expressions Schutz reluctantly accepted from Weber. (Embree, 1980: 358
n.3) He still advocates the qualifiers insider and outsider as overcoming the
difficulties just noted, but now has hesitations concerning "construal,"
because it seems too much to pertain to linguistic rather than non-linguistic
"meaning." He currently recognizes no expression better than "meaning"
for expressing the generic concept some specifications of which are under
discussion in these notes.

insider outsider
linguistic
non-linguistic

Figure 1.

The two distinctions discussed thus far intersect to yield four bi-determinate
types of "meaning" and "understanding" (see Figure 1). There are two other
expressions that are closely related to "meaning" in Schutz. Both
"interpretation"1 and "understanding"2 can have significations comparable
in their broadened significations for Schutz with his "meaning" and can also
be specified. There can then be insider and outsider linguistic and non

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210

linguistic "interpretations" and "understanding" as well as "meaning."

(3) The third passage quoted above also states that the matters that have
"meaning" are human actions, relations, and situations. How these come to
be "meaningful" is discussed in many places.3 If these three types of data,
as they might be called generically, are combined with "meaning" as
specified for the actor, partner, everyday observer, social scientist, and
philosopher, there would be fifteen types of "meaningful" data and if the
linguistic/non-linguistic distinction was added, then there would be thirty.
Given this growing complexity, a running example to refer to for
clarificatory purposes will be useful.
At the Fall 1989 Schutz Memorial Symposium at the New School,
Professor Burke Thomason mentioned the case of saluting. The following
can be feigned to expand on Thomason's example. A sergeant marches a
troop of soldiers along a street on a military base, a captain is met coming
in the opposite direction, the sergeant salutes, the captain returns the salute,
and the troop marches on. These events are observed by several other
soldiers casually walking along, by a group of foreign civilians touring the
base, by a social scientist hired by the Army to research discipline, and by a
philosopher of human science.
The latter two persons can be considered "scientific" observers in a
broad signification and the questions of the relations between pure and
applied social science and of the relations of philosophy of science with
human science left open on the present occasion. In contrast with the
scientific there is what can be called "everyday life," which can be taken
broadly enough to include "practical life" and also the non-practical, e.g.
the more "aesthetic" or recreational attitude of the foreign tourists enjoying
the sights. The sergeant, however, is marching the troop for some practical
military purpose, which could include training, including training at
marching, i.e. drill.4
(4) These matters can be considered from other points of view. One of
the connotations of "subjective" is individual as opposed to collective.
Schutz employed the technique of methodological individualism in his
exposition if not also in his investigations. Thus he began with a somehow
isolated individual person as a "self," related her to an individual other or
"thou," who could reciprocate in orientation and action, related the thus
established "we" to "they," etc. Unfortunately, it is not always clear that he
considered the individual always part of society and that he had an account
of groups. This imbalance can be corrected.5
The soldiers marched by the sergeant make up a group. This group and
its collective action, situation, etc. have a collective insider "meaning" for
its members, who thus form an in-group (and also outsider "meanings" for
others, who can be collective as well as individual). The marching troop has

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 211

an internal structure with the sergeant as leader and the other soldiers as
followers. The troop, the captain, and the other soldiers on the scene also
belong to a larger in-group called the Army. The foreign tourists are an out
group for Army people by virtue of being civilian as well as foreign. Yet
the foreign tourists form an in-group with some sort of an at least informal
structure, perhaps with the women, men, and children in separate subgroup
ings, with collective action by the whole as well as parts, with collective
insider "meaning," etc. Moreover, the social scientist and the philosopher
belong to the groups that are their specialties, disciplines, and tendencies,
which is relevant for their research, but also to other parts of society, such
as their families and nations.6
If enough has been said about collective or group life, then what about
individual life? It can be argued that the sergeant salutes as leader on behalf
of his troop, that the captain, who seems alone, actually returns the salute
on behalf of the Army or the nation, and that the researchers observe on
behalf of their tendencies, specialties, and disciplines and even on behalf of
humanity, but these people can also be viewed as individuals apart from
these insertions into society and, for that matter, history. The individual
captain and the individual sergeant salute. In the first phase of this interac?
tion, the sergeant is the "actor" strictly speaking and the captain is the
"partner" and then, in the second phase, the captain is the active participant
and the sergeant the passive.
In contrast with the action and reaction as "understood" from within, the
scene in question is observed from outside in various ways. The other
soldiers in the troop are each practical observers in the most immediate way
as they see themselves saluted back through as well as saluted for by their
sergeant. The other soldiers walking along the street are observers as well;
they do not belong to the troop but they do belong with its members to the
in-group that is the Army. The onlooking foreign tourists are also observers
and, while not in practical life, they are in everyday life, which researchers
leave when they theorize but back to which they return when they apply
their knowledge. (Cf. Embree, 1988: 262-265)
It goes slightly beyond Schutz's letter (but not spirit) to call the actor and
partner active and passive participants and thus to contrast participation
with observation. That which is participated in as well as observed from
without in various ways can have different "meanings" in relation to these
ways. It is an error not to distinguish these and other ways in which
"meaning" and "understanding" vary. Setting aside the linguistic/non
linguistic, insider/outsider, and the individual/collective (and also the in
group/out-group) distinctions, which are nevertheless cross-cutting, the
different perspectives for "understanding" and "meaning" can be sum?
marized with a chart (see Figure 2).

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212

In content, Figure 2 emphasizes modes of observation, beginning with

the watching that occurs within practical life, which is not far from the
"understanding" that guides passive as well as active participation, and
going on through recreational looking to social scientific and philosophical
reflection. In form, however, it can be taken as showing the fundamental
place of the "meaning" of actions, relations, and situations for the actor, the
active practical participant. The higher and more philosophical the
"understanding" the further it is from the best data.

Philosophy of Human Science

Scientific
/
Applied
\ /
Social Science v

Pure

"Understanding"

Non-practical, e.g. recreational

Everyday Life
/
\ Practical Observer

Practical Life
/
Partner

Participation

Actor

Figure 2.

(5) "Understanding" and "meaning" become more complex when the

linguistic/non-linguistic distinction introduced above is added to the
analysis. Suppose the social-scientific consultant on Army discipline is
interested in what saluting "means." How would she proceed in her

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 213

research? One approach can be called linguistic. By this means she can, on
the one hand, ask the sergeant, the captain, and the soldiers what saluting
"means." (Actually, of course, she will talk with them, get the topic of
saluting to come up, and inquire indirectly using vague questions like
"What is all the fuss about saluting?") Her hope is to get a report in which
the common-sense insider linguistic "meaning" or construal is expressed to
her by people who have been active participants, actors, in the interaction in
question. Her own social-scientific outsider construal can be about this
practical insider construal.
Our researcher would do well also to read training manuals and other
documents, including writings of other scientific writers, and go far back in
military history to learn what saluting has previously been written about as
"meaning." Perhaps she will learn that the showing of the right hand as
empty and in a gesture away from weaponry originally indicated good will
between equals, perhaps saluting was required as a means to training
officers and enlisted personnel in their correlative habits of command and
obedience, etc.
A great deal can be learned through methods of linguistic
"understanding" or "interpretation," in the strict signification that focuses
on texts and speeches exclusively. This approach is as productive and
fascinating as it is complex and difficult. But is it the only approach to
"understanding" saluting? Confronted with a diversity of linguistic
"meanings" from interviews and reading, our researcher may recognize
situational variations and still not reach a unitary scientific outsider con?
strual adequate to all data considered and hence still wonder what saluting
really "means."
The above sketched linguistic approach to "meaning" does not require
the researcher ever actually to see soldiers salute. At the other extreme, she
might carry participant observation so far as to undergo military training,
which might give her a practical, participational, active actor's insider
"understanding" of the non-linguistic "meaning" of saluting. Without going
that far, she could observe cases of saluting both directly and through film
and videotape. In this way she would be seeking to "understand" the non
linguistic "meaning" of saluting. The range of data accessible this way is
narrower, for obviously the past beyond the introduction of film technology
is inaccessible, but it is also possible that the insider report be distorted and
inadequate. After all, the insider is reporting linguistically on her non
linguistic "meaning" and it is well known that speech and action often
diverge, that insider reports can be wrong. Suppose the sergeant's insider
report contends that saluting indicates respect and trust by the inferior of the
superior, but that observation of the saluting action by the social scientist
discloses fear and hostility?

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 214

The point here is not that linguistic "meaning" ought to be disregarded

for the sake of non-linguistic, but rather that both need to be considered and
that, where data of the two sorts conflict, the non-linguistic "meaning" of
the active participant may well be the most reliable. Then again, however,
the manifestation of fear and hostility witnessed might be quite atypical and
related to a particular conflict between the individuals (or the sergeant
might be engaged in thinking of somebody else while he saluted the captain
in an utterly habitual way) and the insider report in terms of respect and
trust might then actually be true of the non-linguistic "meaning" of the
insider's usual attentive saluting of officers, this one excepted.
(6) What is accessed through "understanding" the non-linguistic? A full
answer to this question is beyond the scope of these notes, but two points
must be made if only to bring out two additional major dimensions of what
"meaning" might signify. First of all, much non-linguistic "understanding"
is like linguistic "understanding" in that it is representational, but it is still
different in that no signification is involved in the representation, which is
then not a word and does not refer semantically. Pictures do not "mean" the
objects depicted in them like words signify matters. Nevertheless, we can
be said to "understand" depictions when, on the basis of being aware of
them, we become aware of what they depict. This mode of repre?
sentativeness, which is non-linguistic, i.e. not a matter of an expression
signifying its significandum, may sometimes be intended when a depiction
is alleged to be "meaningful," but no instance of this has been noticed in
Schutz.
Similarly (except there is no resemblance between the representation and
the representatum), indications may be said in ordinary and in some
scientific English to be "meaningful" and "understood" when, on the basis
of awareness of them, the subject becomes aware of what they indicate.
Thus the arm and hand movement involved in saluting may indicate the
saluting inferior's loyalty toward the saluted superior and the salute in
return may indicate that the superior will be honorable toward the inferior,
but loyalty and honor are volitional dispositions and not at all similar to the
movements of body parts that may nevertheless come to represent them
indicationally. In short, some objects of awareness are non-linguistically
"understood" when they non-linguistically "mean" objects other than
themselves and care ought to be taken not to confuse indicational any more
than pictorial representation with linguistic representation.7
In the second place, whether represented or representing or merely
presented in perception, recollection, or expectation, the action, relation, or
situation of the world in which we live is cultural, which is to say that its
contents have cultural characteristics. Cultural characteristics include
belief characters, values, and uses, the latter being often called functional

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 215

characters, which phenomenological reflection on objects as they present

themselves can disclose. (Schutz, 1962: 325) When an object is valuable for
somebody it is not at all unusual to hear it equivalently called "meaningful"
for her. Value here is a correlate of evaluation, liking and disliking, and, in
parallel fashion, "understanding" clearly sometimes connotes the sympathy
and empathy characteristic of an understanding person. Then again, where
the example of saluting is concerned, the question of what it "means" may
well be a question about its use or function within military life, what its
purpose is, what it is a means to. Then "meaningful" is equivalent to
"purposeful" and correlates with volition. The cultural characteristics of
objects as valued and willed and otherwise posited are not significations
and hence, while words are usually about cultural objects, those objects are
not as such linguistic expressions and hence not meaningful linguistically.8
In Schutzian terms, incidentally, saluting itself is not discussed but it is
most likely an expressive gesture. "Examples ... are gestures of greeting,
paying respect, applauding, showing disapproval, gestures of surrender, of
paying honor, etc." (Schutz, 1962: 320-321). These gestures belong to the
second category of bodily movements distinguished by Bruno Snell and
accepted as signs by Schutz, who contrasts signs with symbols in a fashion
that would seem to fall under the distinction between non-linguistic and
linguistic representations used here (Schutz, 1970: 138).
(7) During training in saluting, the gesture and the occasion when it is to
be performed would be focused upon by the learner and the teacher, but
once learned it would become habitual or routine. The following Schutzian
description would then seem to fit saluting.

There is a level embedded in our world of working within actual reach,

within which not only is the state of affairs to be brought about taken for
granted as a self-explanatory end, but also where the appropriateness and
accessibility of specific means to bring about this state of affairs is
simply accepted as a matter of course beyond question. This is the level
of our routine actions in daily life, of the manifold chores customarily
performed in a rather automatic way according to recipes which are
learned and have been practiced with success thus far. (Schutz, 1978:
38-39)

The sergeant might hence be observed by the social scientific outsider to

salute in a routine or automatic manner that does not vary with the par?
ticular situation or the individual saluted and indicates no discernable
difference in his state of mind when he does so. And when asked about the
"meaning" of saluting, she might well reply "I don't know what it means.
It's just something we have learned to do whenever we run into officers." In
this case, one might wonder whether a salute is an action at all and not
merely a conditioned reflex. It can be argued that Schutz has implicitly

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216

considered this possibility:

[I]t is the systems of motives alone, which the actor has built up so far
and which he still accepts as consistent principles for organizing his life,
which determine the meaning of the concrete act he is going to perform.
This fundamental thesis does not contradict the fact that, apparently, a
great deal of our everyday activities are performed without die presence
of clearly understood and well circumscribed projects in the mind of the
actor. But that only means either that such projects do not immediately
precede the act and are hidden in the past of the actor's inner life, or that
they are temporarily out of our view and, if we may say so, hidden in the
future.
As an illustration of the first case, consider routine-work, action ruled
by habits, skills or recipes; these are projected actions, too, though the
project does not immediately precede the performance of the concrete
act. But there did once exist a series of projected and deliberated acts
carried out in order to form the habit, acquire the skill, find out the
recipe. Their basic motive was the actor's insight that he finds himself
faced with certain ends which may be called "constant" ends because
they have to be realized again and again within the framework of
consistent plans. (Schutz, 1978: 36)

There is a tacit emphasis on what is here called "projected and deliberated"

acts in Schutz and hence an underemphasis on habitual or routine actions.
But this, like the emphasis on individual, insider, and practical "meaning"
does not signify that most "meanings" are not collective and, indeed,
outsider and habitual or routine "meanings." It only signifies what is
fundamental for the intelligibility of "meaning."

* * *

It is not easy scientifically to establish the "meanings

and situations. There is always great danger of mistak
sort for another. This is what Schutz objected to Talcot

Professor Parsons has the right insight that a theory

meaningless without the application of the subjective
he does not follow this principle to its roots. He
events in the mind of the actor by a scheme of inte
events, accessible only to the observer, thus confusi
for interpreting subjective phenomena for these
themselves. (Schutz, 1978: 36)

A list of questions based on the foregoing analysis wil

its results but will perhaps also be of use for the e
concerning "meaning." These questions apply to ac
situations, or, simply, human data:

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 217

1. Is the datum "meaningful" for the subject's linguistic "understanding,"

i.e. is it what she reports, is it "meaningful" for her non-linguistic
"understanding," i.e., is it what she lives or encounters, or is it both, and
if not both then how do the "meanings" of the two sorts differ?
2. Is the datum "meaningful" for an insider or for an outsider and is that
subject individual or collective and if collective is it an in-group or an
out-group?
3. If the "meaning" correlates with an outsider "understanding," is it (a)
that of an individual or collective partner with whom the actor is
interacting, (b) that of a bystander or onlooker who is involved in
practical or non-practical everyday life of the same or a different in
group, or (c) that of a scientific observer on the level of pure theory,
applied science, or philosophy of science?
4. Is the "meaning" on either the linguistic or the non-linguistic levels, for
an individual or for a group, for the insider or for an outsider, etc., etc.,
"projected and deliberated" or is it habitual or routine, as the vast
majority of "meanings" are?

The "meaning" of human data is not always easy to "understand."

Notes

1. On the broadened usage of "interpretation," cf., e.g., Schutz (1970: 16).

2. On the broadened usages of "understanding" and "interpretation," cf., e.g.
Schutz (1978: 50-53).
3. Schutz (1978: 33^44) is aptly focused on data of these three types.
4. That the late Schutz of "Symbol, Reality, and Society" (in Schutz, 1962)
considered "the world of everyday life" broader than "the world of working"
(they were synonymous expressions in "On Multiple Realities" (idem) is clear
in a letter to Gurwitsch (Gurwitsch and Schutz, 1989: 226). Inclusion of a
recreational attitude and world as a non-practical part of everyday life is in the
spirit if not the letter of Schutz's work. Regarding the expression "practical
life" as an alternative to "the world of working," cf. Embree (1988).
5. "I had of course only pedagogical reasons for taking a theoretical solipsistic
ego as my point of departure and only subsequently introducing the structures
which are involved in the social world. But that of course does not mean that I
believe that a private experience that is not socialized from the beginning is
possible." (Gurwitsch and Schutz, 1989: 122-124)
6. For a fuller sketch and references concerning Schutz's view of groups, cf.
Embree (1988: 252-55).
7. These remarks about depiction and indication are compatible with the key
Schutzian text, "Symbol, Reality, and Society" (in Schutz, 1962), although the
terminology is different. Cf. Embree (forthcoming). Also quite relevant is "The
Phenomenology of Signals and Significations" in Gurwitsch (1985).

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 218

8. The content of this paragraph goes somewhat beyond the letter of Schutz. It is
based chiefly on Gurwitsch's work. The recent translation of Philosophers in
Exile makes clear to the English reader how extensively the positions of
Gurwitsch and Schutz overlap and complement one another. On the acquisition
of functional characters, see Gurwitsch (1964: 98-102). Similarly relevant is
the discussion of "life-spheres," which can be used to specify Schutz's practical
world of working (ibid., pp. 382-384). Furthermore, Gurwitsch (1974: Chs. 6
and 7) develops a contrasting of the natural and human sciences that parallels
Schutz's. Finally, inquiry beyond Schutz into the non-linguistic
"understanding" of others will benefit from Gurwitsch (1979).

References

Embree, L. (1980). Methodology is where human scientists and philosophers can

meet: Reflections on the Schutz-Parsons exchange. Human Studies 3:367-373.
Embree, L. (1988). Schutz's phenomenology of the practical world. In E. List and
I. Srubar (Eds.), Alfred Schutz: Neue Beitr?ge zur Rezeption seines Werkes.
Amsterdam: Rodolphi.
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