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Ethnohermeneutics grew out of the ethnosciences' emphasis on discourse analysis, componential analysis and cultural grammar. Ethnohermeneutics as interpreted in this article closely follows developments in symbolic anthropology, cognitive anthropology and semiotics. Ethnohermeneutics attempts to locate the scholar and the people under study in each their own network of discourses, traditions, texts and meanings in the context of their social and intellectual circumstances. The result is a third perspective whereby the frames of reference of the scholar and the people under study are transcended. In this article, four functions of this approach are illustrated in relation to the study of Hopi Indian religion.