Starting point for this paper is the so-called ‘crisis of representation’ the social sciences. In the wake of this crisis, the qualitative approaches have gained momentum within the social sciences. Yet at the same time, it struggles with the challenges this crisis has brought about. This struggle is apparent in the ceaseless renewal of strategies to tackle the issue of representation. Nevertheless, the desirability of representation as a guiding principle remains largely uncontested.

I argue that the leap from research data to conclusions about their meaning cannot be accounted for by reference: meaning in qualitative research emanates from the process of discursive framing. In this process, the initial meaning is replaced by a new one. Therefore, every qualitative account is necessarily a fictionalisation of reality. So the validity of qualitative accounts should not be measured by its accuracy toward a factual standard. Instead, the validity of a qualitative account should be judged on how strong it is as an aesthetic experience.

However, the facts that the meaning of human conduct often appears immediately clear and that utterances usually ‘make sense’ to us instantly testify that they never occur in a discursive vacuum. It shows that many utterances and behaviours signify certain cultural meanings which are difficult to pass over. Yet again, it would be imprudent to treat these shared cultural meanings as ‘factual’ or ‘unambiguous’ – even if they might appear so for the subject. The relative ease with which words acquire new connotations should serve as a warning for those who want to solve the problem of meaning by exerting cultural frameworks, for it clearly shows how tentative cultural connotations can be.

So in the process of discursive framing, there are different currents that draw the researcher’s attention; him awaits the difficult task to broaden the boundaries of the conceivable while simultaneously procure a ‘shock of recognition’. This means that he should somehow connect with the conceptual framework of his interpretive audience.

In order to succeed in this task, I argue that qualitative research should be presented as a self-contained account. It does not strive to represent an external reality, but emanates its own reality. By abandoning its mimetic pretence, it draws our attention to the textuality as the ground from which meaning can arise. Thus a place can be found to confront the reader with his active role in the discursive process. On this account, meaning cannot be attributed to an alleged initial reality, but stems from the encounter between text and reader.

Thereby, the validity and truthfulness of an account is not upheld in spite of factual accuracy, but precisely due to its resistance to correspondence-claims. For in a mimetic mode, the reader inevitably disappears from view. By rendering this process explicit, the question of justice shift from truthful representation to dialogue: it becomes a function of the encounter between the reader and the Other embodied in the text.

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