Phenomenological process
As one of the major influences on phenomenological enquiry Schutz proposed that
individuals approach the life world with a stock of knowledge made up of common
sense constructs and categories that are essentially social in action. These stocks of
knowledge produce familiarity, but they are always incomplete and open ended.
Naming requires the interpretative application of a category to the concrete particulars
of a situation (Holstein and Gubrium, 1994). Language is the central medium for
transmitting meaning and as such provides a methodological orientation for a
phenomenology of social life that is concerned with the relation between language use
and the objects of experience. The meaning of a word is taken to be what it references,
corresponds with, or stands for in the real world. This is based on the premise that the
essential task of language is to convey information and describe “reality”. It is also
assumed that there is a degree of commonalty in that others experience the world in
fundamentally the same way, intersubjectively sharing the same meaning. The basic
assumption is that a person’s life is a socially constructed totality in which experiences
interrelate coherently and meaningfully. With regard to the process of enquiry, the
phenomonologist has only one legitimate source of data, and that is the views and
experiences of the participants themselves. This in itself assumes that the participant’s
view is taken as “fact”. Furthermore, participants are selected only if they have lived
the experience under study. Sampling is therefore purposive and prescribed from the
start and the main instrument of data collection is the interview.