Prolegomenon to the relation between social theory and method*

Correspondence address: Department of Sociology, McClatchy Hall, Stanford, CA 94305, USA. E‐mail: [email protected].

Building on the work of Noam Chomsky (1963), this paper presents a hierarchy of grammars and associated computational automata in order to inform social theory construction and method. A detailed exposition of linguistic forms within the grammar hierarchy reveals clear analogues with common social scientific paradigms. Two of these paradigms (which are termed structural and process approaches) are already being widely exploited by formal methodological techniques. A third paradigm, which is rooted in a tradition of interpretive sociology, has been more resistant to formalization. Using arguments from theoretical computer science, the paper suggests that existing quantitative methodologies can be extended to accommodate qualitative arguments which subsume empirical domains as diverse as natural language and structurational phenomena.

Key words:

• Methodology (philosophical)
• theoretical problems
• models
• information processing
• linguistics
• computers

Notes

Correspondence address: Department of Sociology, McClatchy Hall, Stanford, CA 94305, USA. E‐mail: [email protected].