The Language of Social Analysis

Abstract

In previous chapters, particularly the last, I argued that the humanist challenge to positivism had the effect of leaving problematic residual imprints on the realist project as a result of realism’s attempt to embrace the insights of humanism. In this chapter I want to extend this line of thought into a discussion of the role of language in social scientific analysis, particularly as this concerns the question of the relation between theory and evidence. My argument is that a realist conception of social science must clearly reject the humanist characterisation of the relation between lay and social scientific terms. Furthermore, I argue that this is a necessary prerequisite to an adequate understanding of the relation between theory and evidence; that is, one which is able to embrace both the stratified nature of social reality and the various discourses of social science as I have described them previously.