The lifeworld – enriching qualitative evidence

This is a draft of a paper due to appear in Qualitative Research in

Psychology. Please quote from the published version.

Abstract

The focus of research of phenomenological psychology is

experience – made up of the object to which consciousness

refers, plus a mode of consciousness (perception, judgement,

remembering, etc). But the objects of experience are not ‘free

floating’. Any experience is inevitably interwoven with the

rest of the individual’s lifeworld. In this paper I argue that

there are necessary aspects (‘fractions’) of any lifeworld

whatsoever: selfhood, sociality, embodiment, temporality,

spatiality, project, discourse and moodedness. Since these are

always implicated in the experience, it is certainly no risk to

the integrity of the collection or analysis of qualitative

data – in fact it enriches the description of the experience –

to actively investigate these fractions, whatever the precise

research topic might be. This is true of all qualitative

research that aims to speak in first-person terms of the

individual’s involvement in their lived environment.

Keywords

lifeworld, phenomenological psychology, experience,

interviewing, qualitative data analysis, epochē.

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1. Phenomenological psychology and the realm of experience

For phenomenological psychology, the person is not viewed as

part of the chain of objective mechanisms of the natural

world. Phenomenological psychology does not aim to discover

the conditions under which human behaviour is caused. It sets

these questions aside and, instead, turns its attention to the

taken-for-granted meanings by which our experience is

constituted. The ‘findings’ of a piece of research would

answer the question, What is it (or what would it be) like for me (or someone

else) to experience this? So a description is developed of the

conditions that make the experience what it is.

The details of an experience are no means always explicitly

known by the experiencer. They are usually simply lived through in

the process of carrying out some activity. In everyday life

attention is not paid to the experience itself – the features

experienced are just ‘used’ to fulfill the activity of the

moment. So in research, consideration has to be carefully

given to the lived-through meanings of an experience. These

are to be brought to light and built into the description.

For example, when giving a gift (Ashworth, 2013) what are the

meanings involved for the giver and the recipient? What

constitutes ‘giving a gift’? When and where can gift-giving

occur? I will draw on the phenomenology of gifting below for

examples.

In psychological research of this kind, aiming at describing

the taken-for-granted meanings which constitute an experience,

it becomes plain that any experience is inevitably interwoven

with the rest of the individual’s ‘lifeworld’. I aim in this

paper to put the case for the fruitfulness to qualitative

research of having a particular awareness of the lifeworld –

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that is, the whole subjective situation in which the

individual is engaged while they are experiencing the specific

event or phenomenon with which the research is concerned.

Without such an awareness in the collection of qualitative

material and its analysis, the researcher could well miss

significant aspects of the experience.

With such a focus, the paper does not attempt to provide a

detailed discussion of the phenomenology of the lifeworld is

general, nor the history of the concept, nor is it possible to

provide a phenomenology of each of the elements or ‘fractions’

which I argue are constituents of the lifeworld – that would

be attempting something which several volumes of close

reasoning would fail to do. So the account here is quite

‘broadbrush’; the paper has the practical aim of encouraging

qualitative researchers to be aware of the lifeworld and to

interrogate the event or phenomenon with which they are

concerned with an eye to the ‘fractions’ of the lifeworld.

1.1 Bracketing presuppositions: avoiding the ‘psychologist’s

fallacy’

How are descriptions of experience, of the quality required

for a phenomenological psychological account, to be developed?

Husserl (e.g. 1983 / 1913) insisted that, if the researcher is

to investigate an experience purely and simply as experience,

it is necessary to set aside or bracket away the assumptions

which the researcher already has regarding the experience.

This ‘setting aside’ is known as the epochē, the means by which

we come afresh to experiences in order to describe them.

William James (1950 / 1890) pointed out how easily a

researcher can unintentionally impose their own meanings onto

research participants’ experiences. (James dubbed this the

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psychologists’ fallacy, see Ashworth, 2009). Following Giorgi (2009),

I regard it as definitive of phenomenological psychology that

it adopt the discipline of the epochē.

It is true that the epochē can never be complete. For instance,

the researcher cannot but start trying to understand an

experience by using their own categories of thought. Also,

cultural assumptions are built into the very communication

between researcher and researched. Be this as it may, the

researcher must continually, self-critically question their

understanding, to minimize the danger that the research fails

to capture the actual experience.

For example, as part of the epochē, in research investigating

giving a gift, the scholarly literature had to be bracketed. That

literature (e.g. Mauss, 1990/1925, and Derrida, 1992/1991)

almost unanimously argues that the recipient of a gift

experiences an implicit obligation to reciprocate. Gifting is

thereby reduced to the structure of economic exchange: a gift

is repayment, or a repayment in the future is expected. That

assumption – that the obligation to reciprocate is part of the

experience – must be subjected to the epochē. The way must be

cleared for asking the question, What is the experience itself like?

Of course things bracketed in the epochē may re-appear in the

findings. It may indeed be that gifts are found to evoke a

sense of obligation. But expectations like this must not be

imposed on the description of the experience.

The difficulty of performing the epochē, and maintaining a focus

on experience, has led some qualitative researchers to

downplay its importance and to emphasize the role of

researcher interpretation (e.g. Smith, Flowers & Larkin,

2009). The danger of this move is that one could easily

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succumb to the psychologist’s fallacy. There is an ongoing and

complex debate about the roles of description and

interpretation, and about the related roles of epochē and

reflexivity (see Giorgi, 1992; Langdridge, 2008). It remains

the case that interpretation is justifiable if the research

plainly remains within the phenomenological realm – that is,

the realm of experience.

1.2 The basic structure of experience: intentionality

Taking an experience as it is in itself, ‘appearance in its

appearing’, setting aside concerns such as whether the

experience is of something real or not, phenomenological

psychology knows no difference between what is and what seems to

the person to be.

But all experience has a common structure. Any experience is

an inextricable amalgam of (a) a mode of consciousness, which

may be perception, imagination, memory, judgement, etc – and

mixtures of these – and (b) a ‘content’ - the thing perceived,

the event imagined, what is apparently remembered, and so on.

These two constituents of an experience are termed in the

philosophical literature the noesis and the noema, and the

amalgam is called intentionality (see Husserl, 1983 / 1913, §36, p 73, and also see Moran, 2000, pp 155-161 for a discussion of

intentionality and its structure).

The amalgam of a mode of consciousness and its ‘intentional

object’ is basic to any experience at all. There are other

features of experience beside intentionality that, even though

they have been bracketed, cannot but appear in the structure

of experience. Thus, Heidegger developed the theory of

intentionality to say that when something is perceived,

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remembered, imagined, etc., one cannot experience it without

it being apprehended in terms of a meaningful world or lifeworld.

(See Heidegger, 1988 / 1927: §15(c), 170 – for him, world and

lifeworld are synonyms.) The objects and events of experience

are never free-standing but depend for their meaning on their

context in the lifeworld.

The investigation of any experience must take that experience

to lie within the system of implications, associations –

meanings – that constitute the lifeworld. For instance, giving

a gift is bound up with the giver’s understanding of

themselves in relation to the recipient, their project (roughly

here project means purpose) in giving the gift, their –

probably not deeply considered – feeling that the right time

and place has been chosen, and many other features which are

part of that mesh of taken-for-granteds that place giving

within the lifeworld.

1.3 The lifeworld

For Heidegger (1962 / 1927) all experience whatsoever is

‘within a world’, and – though there is debate – Husserl (1970

/ 1954) followed him in introducing the closely-parallel

concept of lifeworld. This is for each of us ‘my real,

subjective world’. But what is a personal world for me shares

with everyone else’s world certain ever-present

characteristics.

The classic authors do not provide a detailed account of the

phenomenology of the lifeworld. However, partial accounts of

the essential features of the lifeworld are found in the

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philosophical work of (for example) Husserl (1970 / 1954),

Heidegger (1962 / 1927), Merleau-Ponty (1962 / 1945), and

Sartre (1956 / 1943). Many writers on phenomenological

psychology such as Pollio et al. (1997), Spinelli (2005),

Dahlberg, Dahlberg and Nyström (2008); Langdridge (2008); and

van Manen (1990), Valle and Halling (1989), and van den Berg

(1972) stress the centrality of the notion of lifeworld, and

each mention a selection of features. The person nearest to

enumerating a set akin to those treated in this paper is

Medard Boss (1979), basing his account on Heidegger (1962 /

1927). I stress, therefore, that the concept is well-

established and ‘at hand’ for qualitative research, and it is

somewhat surprising that it is not a routine element in our

methodological armoury.

The general point of the paper, then, is that any study of the

lifeworld can be enriched by analysis in terms of the

‘fractions’ of the lifeworld – self, sociality, embodiment,

temporality (with its events), spatiality (with its objects),

project, discourse and moodedness. Indeed, they can be

regarded as a basic structure for the elucidation of the

lifeworld. It is more than likely to be fruitful for a

phenomenological psychological study of a given phenomenon for

it to be considered within the context of the lifeworld. If

lifeworld has essential features and is a human universal,

then it is through the evocation of this structure that the

specific lifeworld of a person can be described, and such-and-

such a phenomenon can be seen immersed in this lifeworld.

2 The ‘fractions’

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It is worth taking stock at this point. I have laid some

weight on importance of the phenomenological epochē, in which

the researcher brackets what knowledge they assume they have

of the experience under investigation in order to make the

participant’s experience absolutely central to the

investigation. Yet now I am drawing attention to the need to

pay attention to the lifeworld in which that experience is

immersed and from which it derives much of its meaning. The

presupposition of a lifeworld seems to go against the

bracketing procedure of the epochē. However, the lifeworld is a

necessary exception. Were we to bracket it, it would

inevitably re-appear as soon as an experience was opened up

for description. This is indeed an implication of Heidegger’s

(1962 / 1927) early claim, when he names beings of the human

kind ‘being-in-the-world’: we cannot but be immersed in a

lifeworld. So the exclusion of the lifeworld from the

consideration of an experience is not possible, and all

intentional objects are necessarily immersed in the lifeworld.

The lifeworld (Ashworth, 2003, 2006a, 2006b) has certain

essential elements that cannot but be expected to show

themselves. Such elements I have termed ‘fractions’ because

these are not independent categories or parameters or

perspectives, but are mutually entailed, with overlapping or

interpenetrating meanings. The oddity, the uncouthness, of the

term ‘fraction’ in this context is intended to avoid the user

slipping into an easy assumption that lifeworld fractions are

strictly distinguishable categories. It gets away from any

kind of modelling of the lifeworld in terms of constituent

dimensions in a quasi-quantitative way. (Because of the

distinct use of the term in phenomenological philosophy, I

hesitate to employ the word ‘horizon’ here, but each fraction

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is, in a certain sense, a lifeworldly horizon of the

phenomenon under study.)

Each fraction is there for any phenomenon whatsoever, though

some fractions may be weightier for the meaning of a given

phenomenon than others. Part of the practice of the epochē is

so-called equalisation – avoiding assuming before there is

evidence that one aspect of a phenomenon is more significant

than others. In the case of the lifeworld, the assumption must

be bracketed that a certain fraction or set of fractions will

be dominant in the lifeworld context of the particular

phenomenon under investigation. Usually it does turn out that

certain fractions have special relevance to a particular

phenomenon while others remain in the background (so selfhood

and sociality are salient in the case of gift-giving, while

the others are essential to giving a gift but are less

salient). But priorities must not be assumed ahead of

investigation.

Each fraction imposes, as it were, its own ‘aura’ or theme on

the lifeworld without being detached from the other fractions.

The whole lifeworld is mine, just as the whole lifeworld gains

its meaning from my sociality; the whole lifeworld is relative

to my embodiment; the whole lifeworld is temporal and spatial;

the whole lifeworld has its priorities and saliences which

mark out the individual’s cares and concerns, their projects;

the whole lifeworld bears the marks of the categories and

grammatical dispositions of the culture and language, and the

whole lifeworld, as it is lived through, is experienced

affectively in terms of the moods which the entities

(entities-for-me) disclose. Each fraction is essential, and

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each melds in with the others. Yet we can think each one

separately, and view the lifeworld in its light.

The criterion for inclusion of a ‘candidate-fraction’ within

the set of fractions of the lifeworld is that it can be seen

as an inevitable feature of any experience whatsoever. The

judgement is that it is self-evident or apodictic – a standard

test of phenomenological philosophy. My judgement is not

sacrosanct: the reader may question the set presented here and

may propose others. At the end of this paper I mention others

that have been suggested. The question to be put to a proposed

fraction is whether it is self-evidently constitutive of any

imaginable lifeworld. The meaning of an experience for the

experiencer will then be partly due to that fraction and the

researcher will find that the description of the experience is

illuminated by reference to that fraction.

A final preliminary comment on the set of fractions: Each one

is of enormous complexity, as one would expect of an item

which is part of the constitution of a person’s lifeworld (so

that such-and-such a fraction can contribute to the particular

meaning of any experience). In what follows, then, I have

necessarily adopted a very broad-brush approach. To do

otherwise would demand a phenomenological dissertation for

each of the different fractions. In any case, such detail

would run counter to the practical aim of this paper. The

mention of each fraction is intended simply to encourage

qualitative researchers to interrogate the phenomenon or event

that they are investigating with reference to the fractions.

So, for instance, one might ask, Is there a temporal aspect to

this? I do not want to suggest the forms in which temporality

might be encountered, despite the fact that the literature on

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each fraction is enormous. The specific role of temporality in

a particular context needs to be teased out carefully without

reference to some normative account.

In what follows, the main philosophical source is Merleau-

Ponty’s (1962 / 1945) Phenomenology of Perception.

2.1 Selfhood

Heidegger (1962 / 1927) insisted that we have no access to

ourselves except through the lifeworld:

[The individual] never finds itself otherwise than in

the things themselves, and in fact in those things that

daily surround it. It finds itself primarily and constantly

in things because, tending them, distressed by them, it

always somehow rests in things. Each of us is what he

pursues and cares for. In everyday terms, we understand

ourselves and our existence by way of the activities we

pursue and the things we take care of. (Heidegger, 1988 /

1975: §15, p 159)

The self as a fraction of the lifeworld is not the self in the

sense of the ego to which intentional objects are presented,

the subject of consciousness. As Merleau-Ponty (1962 / 1945: xi)

puts it, ‘…There is no inner person, the person is in the

world and only in the world do they know themselves” (1962 /

1945: xi). For phenomenology, there is no access to any inner

self. Rather, the self as a fraction of the lifeworld is the

manner in which my world speaks of my interests, concerns,

choices and priorities, and the way in which my actions and

their effects are open to awareness. The things ignored or

forgotten or not done, as well as the things attended to or

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remembered or carried out, all point to my selfhood. The

coherence, or maybe several different lines of coherence of my

lifeworld can be regarded as indicative of self. (For a clear

discussion of the phenomenology of the self, see Zahavi,

2005.)

As a fraction of the lifeworld, selfhood is a continual

background meaning of my thoughts, feelings and behaviour. If

I am to describe myself, then, I do not ‘look inside’. It is

my experiential world that speaks of me. We find our selves in

the subjective world to which our thought and activity is

directed. Experience is embedded in a world which already

speaks of the individual perspective of the experiencer.

In phenomenological psychological research, then, we may

address a particular experience in terms of its meaning for

the self. How does the lifeworld speak to us of social

identity; our sense of agency, and a person’s feeling of their

own presence and voice in the situation? (For example,

powerlessness might be a feature of the psychological

situation for the individual.)

The lifeworld in general speaks of my self in the sense I have

outlined, and it is often explicitly (and always implicitly)

the case that my selfhood or identity is bound up with my

relationships with others. So, to return to the case of the

gift relationship, both being a giver and being a recipient

entail issues of identity and selfhood in relationships. In

the following example, giving is unfulfilled. This is because

the circumstances are such that it is presuming too much to

claim that one has a right to offer a gift – as if the

relationship were firm:

It was a gift of money, by cheque, from [a relation]. This

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was unfamiliar as very little contact had occurred for

over 6 years. On visiting [them] … [they] wrote a cheque

as a gift

I had not told [them] I had changed my surname. I was in a

dilemma, as [they] wanted to do something nice but I

wasn’t ready to tell [them] I’d changed my name. Having a

very short moment to decide, I explained that I had

changed my name. [They] didn’t really listen and said,

“I’ll leave it blank.” I accepted the cheque and thanked

[them].

I haven’t cashed it yet. It sat on the shelf tied up in

that moment. I think I feel some guilt at not telling

[them] sooner about my name change. I’m also disappointed

that it happened as it did. [They] wanted to do something

nice but for me it was the wrong time. I’d rather not have

the money and would have preferred more time to get to

know [them] again. … (Ashworth, 2013: 11,12)

The ‘right’ to be a donor or recipient may be problematical.

Sometimes offering a gift is inappropriate because it implies

an identity that the other may not be willing to affirm. In

the account above, the pretence is that a gift is being

exchanged between one family member and another in

affectionate recognition of a relationship. Actually the

relationship is merely formal; in terms of feeling, the

relationship is insufficiently well established for the

identities of giver and recipient to be comfortably claimed

and acknowledged.

The self is not ‘internal’ but is to be seen in the nature of

one’s concerns within one’s world. Many of these concerns

entail relationships with others and we depend on the other

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person to acknowledge and confirm our identity-claim. In

general, in experiencing my world, I implicitly see in its

priorities and foci, my own projects, cares and concerns. My

world is laid out in terms of the objects and events that

matter to me. I see my self in the experienced lifeworld.

2.2 Sociality: relationships with others

Other people are a central part of our lifeworld especially

because of their impact on our selfhood. We have seen that

selfhood takes place in a lifeworld in which it can often be

affirmed or undermined by others. Our identity links us to

others and is provided by interaction with others.

Other people are different from the inanimate things of our

lifeworld. In the fifth of Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations (1973 /

1950), we have what amounts to a description of the essence of

the phenomenon of understanding that the other is a person.

Among the essential characteristics of understanding another

to be a ‘person’ are:

The other is a subject in the world, a minded being like

myself. This is the assumption of the other as an alter ego.

The world is, for both of us, an intersubjective one – there for

everyone. So, for example, I and the other can share the

same object of attention.

There is reciprocity of perspectives such that, standing in my

position (and analogously, sharing my biographical

standpoint) the other can take my mental perspective – and I

can take theirs.

Though these are apparently taken-for-granted base

assumptions, it can be that the phenomenology of personhood of

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the other is challenged in some distressing circumstances such

as the later stages of Alzheimer’s disease (Ashworth and

Ashworth, 2003). But studies in which extreme instances of

problematical personhood occur are by no means the only ones

in which attention should be paid to others. In addressing the

lifeworld in the context of a phenomenological psychological

study of a particular phenomenon, we ought always to concern

ourselves with the relevance of others and of relations with

other people. How are others implicated in an experience, and

does the situation affect relations with others?

In the context of the phenomenology of the gift relationship,

Adam Smith, as early as 1790, noted thow sensitive to

interpersonal nuances giving is:

[W]henever in any action, supposed to proceed from

benevolent affections, some other motive had been

discovered, our sense of the merit of this action was

just so far diminished as this motive was believed to

have influenced it. If an action, supposed to proceed

from gratitude, should be discovered to have arisen from

an expectation of some new favour, or if what was

apprehended to proceed from public spirit, should be

found out to have taken its origin from the hope of a

pecuniary reward, such a discovery would entirely destroy

all notion of merit or praise-worthiness in either of

these actions. (Adam Smith, 2006 / 1790: 301)

Plainly also, issues of power must be considered in the

context of interpersonal relations.

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2.3 Embodiment

For a valuable collection of studies on the phenomenology of

the body, see Welton (1998). In research into any experience

it is appropriate to consider the way this fraction of the

lifeworld is expressed or perceived or responded to by others.

How does the situation relate to feelings about one’s own

body, including gender, ‘disabilities’ and emotions?

In the case of the phenomenological psychology of the gift

relationship, embodiment tends not to be expressed directly in

the empirical data. However, as Merleau-Ponty (1962 / 1945:

82) points out, it is through the body that we are able to

pursue our projects. By ‘project’ here is meant purpose (but

see 2.6 below). Thus illness – though bodily, and often

thought about in close-to-material terms – may well be most

felt as illness because of the way in which our projects

(including giving) are thwarted. In general, as Douglas (1990)

remarks, there can be a kind of moral inequity between giver

and recipient (the giver having higher ‘moral status’). If the

recipient is unable to reciprocate maybe due to illness, gifts

can be resented – reflected in such phrases as ‘cold charity’

– and individuals can try to avoid entering the recipient

role.

2.4 Temporality and its events

Of course, all experience is lived through and has a temporal

flow (Husserl, 1991 / 1893-1917; Zahavi, 2005). As regards

temporality as a fraction of the lifeworld, the flow of events

almost inevitably requires investigation. For instance, when

is the starting point of the experience and what is its

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conclusion (if it has one)? A given experience is also bound

up with the sedimented history of past experiences which the

person construes, or unreflectively lives, as somehow

relevant. So a particular, occasioned instance resonates with

the individual’s past:

[E]ach present reasserts the presence of the whole past

which it supplants, and anticipates that of all that is

to come, and by definition the present is not shut up

within itself, but transcends itself towards a future and

a past. (Merleau-Ponty, 1962 / 1945: 420)

Temporality opens up a number of lines of inquiry. For Schutz

(Schutz & Luckman, 1973, 1975) interest focused on such things

as the historical flow within an organisation from predecessor

to contemporary to successor. This plainly relates to the idea

of ‘career’. In some contexts, not all, this would indeed be

an important way in which this fraction of the lifeworld had a

bearing on the experience. In general, in any study, we ought

to ask how time, duration, or biography bears on the nature of

the experience.

In the gift relationship, a distinction is often made between

occasions on which it is expected that a gift will be given,

and occasions when there is no expectation, so any gift is

spontaneous. This is a distinction is the cultural meaning of

the particular moment of time – it is an occasion for giving

or it is one in which no gift is expected, though a

spontaneous gift might carry special weight. One account (by a

person whose first language was not English) makes this point

specifically:

... We have the point where an object or item stands out

to us which we can relate to a friend or family member

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liking. It can be a strong feeling in assuming that they

would be delighted to receive such an item. ...

This may show why some people find gift buying at

Christmas a bore. People being forced to show kindness.

Spontaneous gift giving can be the kindest and most

emotional of gift giving and receiving. (Ashworth, 2013:

15)

Gifts are occasioned by definite events (birthdays, Christmas,

and the marking of life events such as transitions – job

changes, marriage...) But it can be that it just seems right

to spontaneously present someone with a gift. The person

quoted above feels that the ceremonial occasions on which

presents are required can lack some of the spirit of giving.

2.5 Spatiality and its things

The lifelong work of David Seamon (e.g. 2012) has been

concerned with the spatial fraction of the lifeworld. How is

space laid out? Dyck (1995) has provided a telling

phenomenology of the spatial as it relates to a patient with

multiple sclerosis, and this illustrates exactly the

importance of this fraction of the lifeworld. How is the

person’s picture of the geography of the places they need to

go to and act within affected by the situation? (Frustrations?

Possibilities?) Moreover, this ‘geography’ will not merely be

physical; rather there will be social norms and a host of

other meanings associated with places.

Of course this interacts with our embodied nature, and with

discursive features of the situation. Consider how the

stylised map of a city’s subway system can for many be a major

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aspect of their experience of the geography of that place.

In the gift relationship, spatiality can affect the meaning of

a gift. One systematic problem that givers usually have is

gauging the recipient’s gratitude:

However, three days on, the items were still lying on the

table in the lounge and had not been moved to the

upstairs. A week later they were still there. Everyday

that I saw them, my heart sank as I had not managed to

get him something he wanted enough to get excited about.

(Ashworth, 2013: 22)

2.6 Project

Sartre (1956 / 1943) used the notion of project in a pivotal

way in his analyses of individual people. We are all said to

have a fundamental project, in terms of which our activities

can be understood. But I want to dissociate my use of the term

from Sartre’s, which is too all-encompassing, almost working

as a substitute for personality. Rather we may ask, How does

the situation relate to the person’s ability to carry out the

activities they are committed to and which they regard as

central? (The emotions of regret and pride, among others may

relate to such pursuance of projects.) All the things and

events of the lifeworld may be related to the notion of

project. Heidegger (1962 / 1927) has a cognate concept, care,

which refers to the fact that there are aspects of the

lifeworld to which we have some commitment, whereas some

things are at the periphery of our care, since they do not

have much bearing on activities to which we are committed.

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The activities and entities of our lifeworld have a meaning in

terms of the projects with which they are associated. In every

instance of gift-giving a project can be seen which makes

sense of the situation – often it is merely the fulfilment of

a cultural norm, of course, but other projects are frequently

obvious. Consider this blatant piece of attempted

manipulation:

This was a gift to an acquaintance who I was attempting

to influence in that he would come and play for a

[sports] team that I help run. He has a liking for JD

whiskey and it had been his birthday so I used this as an

excuse to present him with this gift for his birthday

whilst strategically trying to have him obligated to

me. ... (Ashworth, 2013: 16)

More usually, the giver has the simple project of cementing

affectionate relationships with the recipient.

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2.7 Discourse

Phenomenology is sometimes thought to devolve to discourse. We

have a number of substantial arguments in favour of the

primacy of discourse. One is Wittgenstein's claim that 'the

limits of my language are the limits of my world' and his

argument against the possibility of a private language.

Heidegger's remarks about 'language as the house of Being' are

also weighty. And Derrida's critique of Husserl’s work as a

so-called 'philosophy of presence' also points in this

direction. The argument is that experiences cannot but be

shaped by our discursive constructions. So qualitative

psychology does not reveal a lived world or even a system of

personal constructs which relate the individual to reality,

but charts a matrix of meaning elements, each receiving its

meaning purely and simply from its position within system of

elements as a whole.

However, even though discourse is a powerful factor in the

lifeworld, phenomenological psychologists would argue that

discourse is used and transcended by individuals, rather than

being determinative. Phenomenological psychology retains

emphatically the place of the conscious agent, and this agent

is intentionally related to the lifeworld of experience,

rather than a world of constructed discourse.

Speech is, therefore, that paradoxical operation through

which, by using words of a given sense and already

available meanings, we try to follow up an intention

which necessarily outstrips, modifies and itself, in the

last analysis, stabilizes the meanings of the words which

translate it. (Merleau-Ponty, 1962 / 1945: 389)

To return to the place of discourse as a fraction of the

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lifeworld, then, we must ask in a phenomenological

psychological investigation, What sort of terms are employed

to describe the experience in which we are interested? Also,

what other cultural forms surround the experience?

Plainly the gift relationship is a cultural entity in which

each giver and recipient participates. But, as Merleau-Ponty

asserts, it is freshly lived in each situation in a distinct

key, with modifications, unique interpretations, and enriched

meanings. The gift relationship is very often emperilled by

the fact that there are customary elements to it, which the

giver and recipient implicitly assess as to their weightiness.

The expression and perception of gratitude is one important

example. The fact that there are established expressions of

gratitude can make it seem that the recipient has merely

fulfilled a conventional routine and that the emotion is not

heartfelt. We have seen that leaving a gift in the place where

it was received rather than taking it away as a treasured

possession or making use of it, subverts any words of

gratitude that may have been expressed. Here is a further

example, where the recipient is unsure how to make clear the

truthfulness of the depth of his gratitude for the generous

gift of the cost of a degree course.

… It has put pressure on my current situation as I want

to make the ‘giver’ proud that they gave me the gift,

this is good pressure though as it gives me more

motivation to succeed. I hope to ‘prove’ to the giver how

grateful I am by being successful. ... (Ashworth, 2013:

23)

The recipient wishes to express gratitude to his benefactor by

being successful through the opportunity that the gift has

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provided.

2.8 Moodedness – ‘mood as atosphere’

Experience is in the context of a flow of affect. Henry

(1973 / 1963) has, in a lengthy series of publications, made

the case for the self-awareness of consciousness (ipseity) and an

associated ongoing pathos or emotional tone, as foundational to

all human experience. Be that as it may, we can draw from

Henry the principle that there is an affective tone to all

experience, and its specific nature ought to be a topic in any

particular phenomenological psychological investigation.

This aspect of the lifeworld remains under-researched. The locus

classicus is Heidegger (1962 / 1927, §29) where he describes

‘Being-there [i.e. the individual in their lifeworld] as a

state of mind’ (p 172). There is an ongoing sequence of

fluctuating moods.

We need to be careful. ‘Having a mood’ and similar expressions

involve presuppositions about source or cause which should be

set aside. The experiencer is mistakenly assumed to be the

sole source of the mood. Using the phrase ‘mood as atmosphere’

reminds us that a feeling-tone is an essential element of any

situation for us. It is an experiential part of the total

lifeworldly situation, precisely in the way we have seen that

intentionality involes, inextricably, the thing experienced

and the mode in which it is experienced. Mood as the

atmosphere of an experience should be considered explicitly in

coming to a description of the experience.

Each instance of the gift relationship has its own emotional

tone, linked with the other fractions of the lifeworld

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especially selfhood, relationship with others, and project.

Take this emotionally-rich account in which a gift was

gratefully received but the donor was detested:

I was a child. ... A man was drowning puppies in a bucket

of water (he was a farmer) and I came upon him as I was

out walking / playing. ... Tears began rolling down my

face. I felt sadness, I felt pain. ... The man saw me. He

bent down and plucked one of the puppies out of the water

and handed it to me. Me and the man looked at each other,

we did not speak. I took the puppy. I felt overwhelmed

with love for the puppy. ... I hated the man, but felt

grateful to him too. I don’t know why but I never felt

afraid of him. ... (Ashworth, 2013: 30)

It is worth noting in this account that the gift is deficient,

partly because the donor did not appear to mean the puppy as a

gift but as an alternative form of disposal. Most importantly,

the gift is not the cementing of a relationship. A central

feature of the moodedness of a successful gift relationship is

to do with the cementing of the personal relationship

signalled by the exchange of a gift.

3 The safety of the fractions

I have argued in the paper that data collection by means of

interviews or otherwise and their subsequent analysis can be

strengthened and enriched by the recognition that the

lifeworld has certain characteristics that can be expected to

show themselves without hazarding the epochē. Because the

lifeworld is universally present, and because these fractions

are inevitable structures of the lifeworld — part of its

essence, if you will — their recognition within the research

24

does not introduce arbitrary presuppositions. Even wildly

imaginary scenarios, e.g. biblical ones such as the apocalypse

of St John and his vision of the New Jerusalem, can be seen to

entail the fractions of the lifeworld.

Darren Langdridge (2007: 103-104) has registered some disquiet

the absence of ‘being towards death’ as a fraction of the

lifeworld despite the fact that Heidegger (1962 / 1927: §§41-

44, 191-226) gives considerable weight to this, linked as it

is to temporality and care (project). But there is no reason

why the fractions of the lifeworld in this paper should be

taken as exhaustive. Being towards death and other candidates

may well have a justifiable claim for inclusion as fractions

of the lifeworld. It is important, however, not to distort

qualitative data collection and analysis by presupposing

fractions that do not actually appear. My belief is that the

eight fractions that I have mentioned do inevitably appear in

any lifeworld whatsoever. Other pervasive features of the

lifeworld may be added, were it to become clear that they are

of the same status as those mentioned. The epochē has no other

purpose as a method than to allow the researcher to get as

close as possible to the experience which is under scrutiny.

If ‘false fractions’ were to slip in, as it were, and subvert

the epochē, then the work would no longer be phenomenological.

Better to have too poor a conception of the fractions of the

lifeworld than to allow spurious features to enter into the

description of the phenomenon.

I hardly need stress that the sketches of the eight fractions

of the lifeworld given above are not intended to be

definitive, but to indicate the general direction that

research might proceed in order to enrich a description of

25

such-and-such a phenomenon or experience through noting the

way in which it is embedded in the lifeworld.

Among the qualitative disciplines, it is within

phenomenological psychology that the lifeworld has primarily

received attention, but surely a methodological concept akin

to it has a place in any qualitative research that aims to

speak in first-person terms of the individual’s involvement in

their lived environment. Lifeworld is a concept that is of

general application to empirical qualitative research in

psychology.

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