Emic and etic

Emic and etic are terms commonly used in the cultural and social sciences. They were coined in 1954 by the American linguist Kenneth Lee Pike (1912-2000) to characterise two opposing perspectives from which cultural systems or social communities can be viewed scientifically and methodologically.

Emic means that one adopts the inside perspective, the perspective of an insider, i.e. a person who belongs to the culture or community in question. This point of view is neither neutral nor objective and generally binding, but usually only opens up a real insight into the actual essence of the culture or community in question.

Etic is the external perspective, i.e. it means that one takes the most neutral standpoint possible of an outsider, i.e. an outside observer, and can thus more easily gain objective and generally binding insights. Here, above all, the relationship to other cultural systems can be more easily viewed with an unbiased eye.

Both points of view can provide important insights, but they also have their specific one-sidedness.

Sympathetic empiricism

It is particularly difficult to grasp esoteric systems scientifically. Without profound insider knowledge, one will hardly be able to grasp them in their actual meaning. On the other hand, it is also necessary to look objectively at the way they interact with their environment. w.Arthur Versluis (* 1959) from Michigan State University, who was intensively engaged in esoteric research on a scientific level, has proposed to combine both approaches into a sympathetic empiricism.

„By “sympathetic empiricism,” on the other hand, I am referring to an intermediate position that incorporates the best of both emic and etic approaches. In the field of Western esotericism, as in that of religious studies more generally, it is important to balance on the one hand the virtues of scholarship that strives to achieve a standard of objectivity, and on the other hand the virtues of an approach that seeks to sympathetically understand one’s subject, to understand it from the inside out, so to speak. Anthopologists have long understood the importance of balancing etic and emic approaches, of on the one hand entering into a culture in order to understand it while on the other hand retaining the status of observer and analyst. If the vice of a too emic position is that of becoming an apologist, the vice of a too etic position is if anything greater: a failure to understand and accurately convey what one is studying. If the vice of the extreme emic approach is too great a sympathy, that of the extreme etic approach is ignorance of and hostility to one’s subject, even if under the guise of a studied neutrality.“

– Arthur Versluis: What is Esoteric? Methods in the Study of Western Esotericism online

In a broader sense, one may well call any empirical method that not only grasps the outside of the object under investigation, but goes into its inner essence, sympathetic empiricism. This applies in particular to the way Goethe looked at nature and the Goetheanism based on his method.

Literatur

• Headland, Thomas; Pike, Kenneth; Harris, Marvin (eds): Emics and Etics: The Insider/Outsider Debate, Sage (1990)
• Jardine, Nick: Etics and Emics (Not to Mention Anemics and Emetics) in the History of the Sciences (2004), History of Science, 42: 261–278 [3]
• Gerhard Kubik: Emics and Etics Re-Examined, Part 1: Emics and Etics: Theoretical Considerations. In: African Music, Vol. 7, No. 3, 1996, S. 3–10
• Theodor Lewandowski: Linguistisches Wörterbuch. 4., neu bearbeitete Auflage. Quelle & Meyer, Heidelberg 1985, ISBN 3-494-02050-7, Stichwort: emische Analyse.
• Kenneth Lee Pike: Language in Relation to a Unified Theory of Structure of Human Behavior (= Janua Linguarum, Series Maior. Band 24). 2. Auflage. Mouton, Den Haag 1967.
• Arthur Versluis: Magic and Mysticism: An Introduction to Western Esoteric Traditions. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers 2007, ISBN 978-0742558366