In the background of structuralism, poststructuralism and postmodernism, contemporary philosophy has taken a new turn. These three important movements gave rise to new social theories, which influenced the literary and cultural criticism, the new concept of writing, theory and discourse. Postmodern hermeneutics examines the significance of language, text and their interrelation in the context of the above theories.

The book is an attempt to apply postmodern hermeneutics in the study of language, i.e. the theory of meaning and interpretation of the life-world in human knowledge and understanding. Four types of hermeneutics such as, philosophical hermeneutics (Gadamer), radical hermeneutics (Ricoeur), critical hermeneutics (Habermas) and deconstructive hermeneutics (Derrida) are discussed and analysed under postmodern hermeneutics. All the above thinkers have been influenced and at the same time critiqued the contributions made by the great phenomenological masters like Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. Postmodernism gives a new way of understanding hermeneutics by rejecting metanarratives, thus creating a new type of discourse, which was not hitherto seen or examined by previous forms of philosophizing.