Hans-Georg Gadamer's development of the hermeneutic question points to the need for a hermeneutic consciousness in the United States appropriate for human communication research. Communication studies in the United States have taken a route very different from hermeneutics. They are based on attempts to understand the subjective intentions of a psychological self, while Gadamer, in attributing greater importance to the developing interaction structure than to the subject, presents understanding as reaching agreement concerning the subject matter. While communication researchers in the United States try to eliminate prejudices and reproduce the other's state of mind through empathy, Gadamer explores ways of increasing understanding by making prejudices appropriately operant. Developing a hermeneutic consciousness in the United States has implications for future communication studies. Attempts should be made to ground all studies in the life experience of everyday actors, to reduce the reification of experience that comes from present concepts, and to question the propriety of the assumed research task of verification directed toward constructing objective knowledge. (Author/GW)