Richard Lanigan's phenomenology of human communication is applicable to the development of a model for critiquing oral interpretation performance. This phenomenological model takes conscious experience of the relationship of a person and the lived-world as its data base, and assumes a phenomenology of performance which creates text in the triadic relationship of literature, persona/performer, and audience. The model explains the experience through the explicit proposition of implicit conscious experience of the literature-in-performance in a three-step process: (1) description of one's conscious experience, or "what I know"; (2) definition, or "how I know"; and (3) interpretation, or "why I know," where the performance-of-audience creates meaning. Each step of this phenomenological method entails the previous one in synergistic relationship. Implications of the model include the following: the use of the audience's conscious experience of the literature-in-performance as data base is preferable to the use of imposed or hypothetical constructs; the method may be useful for critiquing other performances; oral interpretation criticism may be seen as a paradigm of human communication; and a phenomenological performance criticism is needed. (DF)