Framework Selection Memo¶

Framework-selection decision memo — instantiates Context-Bounded Meaning Recovery

Names the interpretive lens a reading will use and records why it was chosen over the alternatives, turning the framework from an unexamined default into an accountable, contestable decision.

Every reading runs through some lens, but most lenses are never chosen — they are inherited, defaulted to, or smuggled in with the reader. Framework Selection Memo drags that choice into the open. It first scopes the interpretive question precisely, then names the candidate frameworks, applies explicit selection criteria, and records why this lens and not the others — including what each rejected framework would have made visible. Its defining contribution is accountability at the level of the lens: it makes the framework a decision someone can be asked to defend, rather than an invisible precondition that quietly determines the answer. Where an alternative-readings review compares the readings a lens produces, this memo is one step earlier — it is about the lens itself and the question it is meant to serve.

Example¶

A product team is trying to interpret roughly forty churn interviews from mid-tier accounts that keep cancelling around month three. Two frameworks are on the table: a price-sensitivity lens ("they leave because it costs too much") and a job-to-be-done lens ("they leave because the thing they hired us for stopped getting done"). The memo scopes the question tightly — why do month-three cancellations cluster in this segment? — and states the selection criteria: fit to the interviewees' own language, actionability, and disconfirmability.

It selects the job-to-be-done lens, with reasons, and — this is the part that earns the memo — records what the price lens would have foregrounded (discount requests, competitor pricing) and why that was set aside as an effect rather than a cause here. The team now knows exactly what its chosen lens makes visible and what it hides, and a skeptic can contest the choice directly instead of only arguing with the conclusions downstream.

How it works¶

The distinguishing move is scoping the question before choosing the lens, then choosing against explicit criteria with the rejected options documented. The interpretive question is fixed first, which constrains the eligible frameworks; candidate lenses are named; criteria — fit, fruitfulness, disconfirmability, and whose interests each framework serves — are applied; and the memo records both the rationale and what each rejected frame would have surfaced. It is, in effect, the audit trail of the lens.

Tuning parameters¶

Selection criteria — which tests you weight — fit-to-data, actionability, parsimony, disconfirmability, stakeholder-neutrality — which changes which lens wins.
Candidate breadth — how many frameworks you seriously consider before committing.
Commitment strength — provisional (revisit if the lens strains against the substrate) versus fixed for the duration.
Reflexivity — how much of what the chosen frame cannot see the memo is required to document.
Question-scope tightness — a single narrow question versus a broad program, which sets how specific the framework must be.

When it helps, and when it misleads¶

Its strength is ending the unexamined default: it names the lens, exposes its blind spots, and makes interpretation contestable at the point where a wrong choice does the most damage.

Its signature misuse is the law of the instrument — reaching for the framework you already own and back-filling the reasons, so the memo dresses a foregone lens in the language of deliberation (Maslow's hammer).^[1] The discipline that guards against it is requiring the memo to state plainly what the chosen frame can't see and to name a concrete trigger that would force a switch — a lens with no stated blind spot and no exit condition is a rationalization, not a selection.

How it implements the components¶

interpretive_question_scope — it fixes what question the reading is answering, which is what makes one framework more eligible than another.
framework_selection_rule — it applies explicit criteria to choose the lens and records the decision, so the framework is justified rather than assumed.

It does not apply the chosen lens to the marks (Close Reading Table), compare the rival readings the lens then produces (Alternative Readings Review), or disclose the interpreter's personal standpoint (that belongs to the running stance record in Hermeneutic Loop Log and to Interpretation Brief).

Instantiates: Context-Bounded Meaning Recovery — supplies the named, justified framework the whole pattern turns on.
Sibling mechanisms: Close Reading Table · Evidence-to-Claim Matrix · Alternative Readings Review · Context Reconstruction Worksheet · Glossary or Code Key · Hermeneutic Loop Log · Ambiguity Register · Interpretation Brief · Interpretation Red Team · Pragmatic Force Walkthrough · Precedent Comparison Table · Stakeholder Meaning Check · Translation Backcheck

References¶

[1] The law of the instrument — "if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail," associated with Abraham Maslow and Abraham Kaplan. It names the failure this memo exists to prevent: defaulting to a familiar lens and fitting the artifact to it, rather than fitting the lens to the question. ↩